The Spring semester seemingly flew by and is now approaching a swift conclusion. However, before accelerating toward the finish line, students must study for everyone’s favorite time of year: finals season.
Regardless of whether you’re a senior or a freshman, everyone is stressed during finals week. Unfortunately, because this week falls at the end of the semester, after months of studying and working hard on previous exams and quizzes, students can fall into the trap of academic burnout.
Academic burnout can happen at any time during the semester, but because we push ourselves to be successful, we can often burn ourselves out near the end. This burnout can even affect our desire to do other things unrelated to school, like on-campus activities. However, academic burnout isn’t something that can take over our lives forever, and it isn’t impossible to manage through different mediums.
What is academic burnout?
Academic burnout isn’t temporary stress; it’s characterized by mental, emotional, and sometimes physical exhaustion. Not only do students experience these different types of exhaustion, but burnout also affects how people feel supported, leading to the impression that support is lacking and that their goals are no longer important.
These types of goals can range from a quiz to their feelings about the major they chose. Symptoms of academic burnout can manifest into much more serious health issues than just tiredness and fatigue; burnout can cause insomnia, depression, and headaches.
Talking about the serious symptoms of academic burnout can make it seem unmanageable and highlight a bleak future for us college students. Still, by familiarizing ourselves with the symptoms of this problem, we can be aware when we’re experiencing them and practice ways to reduce the risk of suffering from these symptoms.
The reality of academic burnout is the quiet exhaustion built up by perfectionism and constant comparison of yourself with others, as well as possibly comparing your past achievements with your current ones. Personally, I experienced academic burnout due to the fear of failure. People often won’t realize that academic burnout isn’t necessarily an overload of assignments, but rather because of the emotional pressure you put on yourself not to fail.
This was the issue that I had, even when I’d check on Canvas and see that failing a quiz or test wouldn’t impact my grade that much, I’d still be sick with anxiety, even when I had triple checked every possible outcome for this assignment. These feelings of mental exhaustion showed me that something needed to change in my routine to prevent further burnout.
How I Manage Academic Burnout
A misconception about academic burnout is that to manage the pressure, you must be willing to accept mediocrity. The idea that you should hold yourself to impossible standards so you can be okay with being average is wrong. I thought this for a while, but it only made my mental health and burnout worse.
I realized I needed to find other ways to manage my burnout and to understand that this isn’t about being okay with mediocrity, but about redefining what success is for me and being okay with realistic, balanced standards for myself.
The best methods I’ve used to help with my academic burnout have been taking advantage of opportunities on campus. Changing my study environment has always been very effective in reducing my burnout, letting my brain breathe a little bit.
I also take advantage of the campus gym and often walk to the Leach Recreation Center after signing up for a yoga or spin class. I do hate to admit this, but working out has helped me a lot with burnout, and breaking a sweat helps my mind relax. I think the common denominator of all of these activities is that they’re all activities that you can do locally on campus, free and away from studying, because the main focus is to relax and add balance to your routine.
Overall, academic burnout is a reality many students face, myself included. Managing that burnout doesn’t mean you must accept lower standards for yourself; instead, it means finding a healthy balance in your life and using the opportunities available to you.
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