University of Windsor exams are two weeks away. When a friend brought this up to me, I was shocked. How has so much time passed so quickly? There’s still so much to do, and it seems like classes only started, yet it’s nearly the end! I was so overwhelmed with work and school this semester, with a never-ending slew of assignments and tests looming around each corner—when one challenge ended, another had already begun, and in trying to stay afloat, I hadn’t even noticed the days go by.
This has, without a doubt, been my busiest year thus far. I finally started participating in clubs, I got a second job, and I started my third year at uni. And it’s not just me. My friends have piled on mountains of work in a desperate fight for a fantastic GPA and co-curricular transcript, while also trying to make time for friendships and the ideal university experience that movies promote. I guess it shouldn’t have been much of a surprise when an over-achieving friend of mine suddenly stopped coming to class.
After one week, we thought she must’ve been sick. After two—maybe it was the flu. When nearly a month passed without her, we knew it was serious. She was—and is—experiencing burnout. No matter how much sleep she gets, she’s exhausted. She can’t get out of bed. Even if she physically could, she can’t find the motivation to do it, she can’t even find a reason to check her agenda and try to finish that week-late paper. Grades don’t matter. School sucks, and it’s not worth trying. She’s sad—she’s very sad—and with only two weeks left to prepare for exams, who knows if this A+ student will even pass?
In listening to her explain the situation, I recognized this issue had become an epidemic among my friends and I this year, though to a lesser degree (thankfully). Another friend of mine can’t bring herself to care about her marks and sparsely hands in assignments. Yet another friend feels exhausted and upset on a near constant basis. Myself, I can’t get enough rest to charge my battery no matter how much sleep I get, and I can see how the quality of my work has dropped as a result.
A frantic Google search led me to the conclusion that burnout can have horrible consequences, the most extreme of them being death (karoshi, as the Japanese call it—when workers die suddenly from overworking themselves). But, the good news is, if you catch the symptoms of burnout in time, you can keep yourself from spiraling down into the depressive abyss.
Chronic fatigue, cynicism, apathy, increased irritability, and worsening performance are all signs of burnout. According to psychologists Herbert Freudenberger and Gail North, there are actually 12 stages to burnout. They progress like this: you have the compulsion to prove yourself, you tell yourself to just work harder, you start neglecting your needs, you dismiss evident problems in your life, you retract from social life and hobbies, you deny your arising problems, you almost entirely withdraw from social life and feel the need to find something (like alcohol) to relieve the stress, your behaviour changes (causing concern in family and friends), you experience depersonalization, you start to feel empty inside, everything becomes bleak and dark and worthless, and finally you collapse entirely (both mentally and physically).
Many people in my personal life and on the internet seem to have come to the consensus that they can travel liberally from stage one (the desire to prove yourself) to stage three (neglecting your needs) without much repercussion—it’s at these stages that preventing total burnout seems easiest. And how do you do so? Well, the enemy of burnout is balance.
If you find yourself affected by these symptoms, then you need to take a break. Realistically, in this time of year, it’s difficult to do so. Things, after all, are only getting busier as the wave of exams approach. But it’s important nevertheless to take some time for yourself and do something relaxing. Go for a walk, meditate, get a good solid 8 hours of sleep… And this may mean saying no to some commitments you’ve made. I get it, I’m a yes person too, but you need to take care of yourself and overloading your system is just not the way to go. Eat well (trust me, you can’t survive on sugar and coffee, I’ve tried), and exercise. Don’t neglect personal wellness.
That said, the key takeaway is that burnout is preventable. Whether you’re in stage three, four, or five, there is a path leading back into some level of normality. But, no matter how much I’ve searched, it seems there’s no remedy for burnout. Once your body shuts down, there’s no easy way back up. At this point, depending on how severe the symptoms are, some hard decisions must be made.
While I’ve convinced my one friend to stay in school, she has ultimately come to terms with the fact that her grades will fall. As of right now, the goal is to pass, and there’s absolutely no shame in that. With this experience in mind, my friends and I are all going to head into second semester and remain mindful about our needs, capabilities, and workload. I hope you join us.