Some form of burnout is inevitable for college students and sometimes it feels like we are running on fumes. With spring break just on the horizon, it is easy to get burnt out. Here are some tips to avoid the all-too-familiar spring burnout.
Prioritize yourself
Some might say it is selfish, but this is a necessity. While I’m not saying you should disregard everyone and all of your responsibilities to do whatever you want to, prioritizing yourself during times of burnout is needed.
For example, there may be some plans you made weeks ago that are quickly approaching that you are dreading — prioritize yourself and cancel. There should be no shame in taking some time for yourself to handle your emotions. For some people, going out while feeling burned out might help, but for others, it might do the opposite. Assess what steps you want to take in prioritizing yourself and do it. During burnout, things are overwhelming and the last thing you need are outside factors contributing to it.
Take it day by day
Everyone knows the feeling of staring at your planner with dread, your eyes scanning over every single assignment and event coming up. When you focus on what's to come, it makes your outlook on the present even worse, so take it day by day.
Of course, we can’t completely ignore things like exams that require studying but try to plan out everything you need to do and then focus on today only. I always catch myself worrying about things that are months away, and this worry only contributes to the feeling of burnout. If your mind is only focused on today, it makes life easier to digest.
Organize, organize, organize
An unfortunate side effect of burnout is procrastination, which makes it feel almost impossible to just sit down and do your work. That’s why making sure you stay organized and stretching your work over multiple days makes it easier to maintain the massive workload every college student has.
Don’t get me wrong, it can be hard to make yourself productive, but if you’re not productive now you’re just going to have to deal with the increased amount of work later. The small things we can do, like organize our tasks, make us one step closer to avoiding and overcoming burnout.
Set attainable goals
Nothing feels better than being able to cross something off your to-do list. This is exactly why setting up attainable goals is worth it. Goal-setting is a great way to motivate yourself into actually being productive, which during burnout feels almost impossible.
If you set small, easy goals for yourself, it will make you feel more accomplished when you ultimately complete them, hopefully motivating you through times of burnout. Everyone needs something to look forward to and setting up small goals like this is an excellent way to trick your brain into being productive!
Realize burnout is normal and often unavoidable
The first emotion I feel when I start experiencing burnout is disappointment. I think that it is somehow my fault this is happening, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Burnout in college (and in life) is sometimes unavoidable and it just happens. It doesn’t matter how diligent of a student you are, these feelings can still creep up unexpectedly.
I guarantee almost everyone has experienced some form of burnout before and knows it feels terrible. Try to remember the feeling is normal, you aren’t a bad student for experiencing it. Keep your head up and fight those feelings. If you handle burnout to the best of your abilities, once you escape those feelings you will be in a better standing than if you had let it overpower you.
Haylee Leasure is a sophomore studying journalism. Please note that the opinions expressed in this column do not reflect those of The Post. Want to talk about the column? Email Haylee at hl125421@ohio.edu.
