With one week left in my junior year of college, I find myself more burnt out than I’ve ever been, still with another year to go. What used to feel like manageable stress has slowly turned into something heavier, something constant and something harder to ignore.
This past school year, and especially this semester, the burnout I experienced has become increasingly overwhelming. Most of my days are 12-hour marathons filled with classes, assignments, a part-time job, extracurricular involvement, and the responsibilities of maintaining a home and caring for two dogs. Even when the academic day ends, the responsibilities don’t.
I often find myself trying to move from one task to the next without fully catching my breath. There are moments when I wonder how I’m going to get through the day, let alone the week, especially when my motivation is basically nonexistent. It often feels like I am constantly behind, no matter how much I do.
In response, I find myself making decisions I normally wouldn’t — cutting corners just to get through assignments, choosing the fastest option or relying on tools I wouldn’t typically depend on. It’s not because I want to take shortcuts, but because I feel stretched so thin that I am constantly trying to survive the workload in front of me. It’s a compromise I’m not proud of, but one that feels like the only way to keep moving forward.
I feel like this immense pressure comes from the expectations that are placed on me as a college student. I’m constantly told that I should be working, building my résumé, maintaining high grades, securing internships, and constantly preparing for what comes next.
While I agree that I should be working hard, it often feels like a constant race to meet expectations that leave me sacrificing my peace and mental health. More often than not, my mind is stuck in a loop of planning the next task, the next assignment or the next day. It rarely feels like it fully shuts off.
Even when I do get time off, I find myself conflicted. There is always a choice between truly resting or trying to catch up on everything I feel behind on. That tension makes it difficult to fully relax, even when I know I have the time.
Still, there are small moments of relief. Sometimes it is when I finally complete something I am proud of and can close my laptop knowing I did enough for the day. Other times, it is simply making it through another week and realizing I survived it, even if it felt overwhelming at times.
At the same time, there is a constant feeling that it is still not enough. That even in doing everything I can, I should be doing more.
What makes burnout difficult as a junior in college is not just the workload itself, but the internal conflict that comes with it — wanting to do things the “right way” while also just trying to get through the day, caring deeply about my education while needing to conserve energy and knowing that sometimes shortcuts feel like the only option available.
As I finish my junior year, I keep coming back to the reality that this isn’t how college should feel. College, alongside working hard, should be a time of exploration, growth, new experiences, and fun. We need to start denormalizing the idea that success requires sacrificing your own values, peace, and mental health, just to meet other people’s expectations. There has to be a way to pursue goals without losing yourself in the process.