We all know school is important. Getting good grades, acing those midterms, doing your homework, finishing projects…the list goes on and on. With school comes career needs, internships, jobs – full time or part time –, the need to constantly be improving yourself for life after graduation, getting involved with extracurriculars and clubs…that list goes on and on too. But with all these things on your plate, you’re more than likely to experience burnout.
What is burnout? All the physical and emotional exhaustion garnered by excessive amounts of workload and stress. Whether or not you know the concrete definition, you are more than likely aware of the feeling. How could you not when you’re a college student that has to prepare for graduation and the next chapter of your entire life?
We millennials are sometimes called “The Burnout Generation.” Emphasis on work quality and quantity is causing many millennials to have to weigh their priorities differently – from which of the many things we are tasked with, to what amount of quality we put into each task, and, most importantly, how much we sacrifice for our work. In turn, we have begun to sacrifice the better of ourselves in order to produce high caliber performances for everything we have going on in our lives. Without doubt it is important to do well, especially as our current world places emphasis on working hard in everything we do to obtain the best results. To be successful. But this comes at our own cost.
We, millennials, do not need to experience burnout. Nor do we want our successes cut short due to our inability to function later down the line due to what we deem as incapabilities in our current life. Take time, look out for yourself, reserve outlets of rehabilitation and enjoyment to balance out your responsibilities. Make sure to find the least bit of satisfaction in what you put yourself through: relationships, work, school… anything. When things in your life begin to confine themselves into the feeling of obligation, that is when you have surrendered yourself wholly and you will succumb to burnout. Prioritize yourself, make sure you know that you are important and so is the way you take care of yourself – in whatever way that may be.