As this year begins to wind down, I find myself without the energy to be productive anymore. It’s not that I don’t want to, I just simply do not have the mental energy to deal with this mountain of work that is accumulating as finals begin to roll around. Many professors have taken the online format as an opportunity to explore new ways of having students understand concepts, but here’s the rub. I’ve noticed that professors have piled all this work onto the end of the semester and it’s not even as simple as a semester project.
For example, one of my classes has a final project, and I chose the format of a research paper on a topic of interest. In addition to this large project, we have to complete an essay as our final exam, plus an essay to count towards the institutional general education assignment. It feels like some professors think that because the semester is coming to an end, all of our other classes are beginning to slow down, which means they can give us even more assignments.
It’s turned into an endless cycle where I struggle to stay on top of the work before more is assigned. This mountain has also remained constant throughout the semester with no pause to catch our breath, as we were not given a spring break. I still felt productive during the time our break would be, but it wasn’t until about two weeks afterward that I began to feel the fatigue of not having any kind of break and a semester the same length as any other year.
I have simply hit a wall and I’m trying to make it to the final stretch, but it’s proving to be very difficult in this very unique world we live in right now.