Burnout is a recurring conversation around the end of the semester. Usually, burnout is centered around academics, but it can also bleed into one’s social life and self-care regimen. I have certainly been a frequent burnout victim.
Anyone who’s ever been a student knows that burnout rears its ugly head around the same time every semester, and yet, it’s never easy to prepare for. Final exams and assignments pile up, and you often find yourself hunched over a desk in the library stacks for hours at a time. What’s worse is that the sun starts setting around 4:30 p.m., and seasonal depression can make your whole life suddenly feel like a never-ending stairmaster machine of work and darkness.
There are some things you can do to ease your strife and some things which are unchangeable. I won’t get on a soapbox and tell you that you should start work early, plan ahead, yada-yada, because of course we should, and everyone’s heard it a thousand times. It won’t stop the system of higher academia from putting you in a tough spot.
While eliminating final exams as a means of awarding students credit is likely a far-flung, idealistic fantasy, I do have questions and concerns about the way some assignments are allowed to be given in the modern day.
A well-lived life is often not overly spent in pursuit of the best professional opportunities. Everyone needs a work-life balance, and in times when everyone is easily within reach via computer or phone, the right to disconnect is essential for good mental health. This issue became more prevalent during the COVID-19 pandemic as, for many, the home became a workspace, making workers feel like they always had to be “on” for their jobs. This had a negative impact on many people’s mental health, and the need to establish clear boundaries between work time and personal time has become an important topic. Many employees advocated for protections for their rights to disconnect from their jobs, even something as simple as not having to check your mail outside of work hours.
Since the professional world takes this matter seriously, our academic institutions should do the same. It’s what they are meant — and paid — to prepare us for, after all. On many occasions, both before and during college, I have felt that my time boundaries were violated by academic demands. For example, many homework assignments given via Blackboard or other websites are able to be set to a due date outside of regular classroom hours. What’s the justification for having an assignment due on a weekend when, in the working world, those two days would be set aside for workers’ personal needs? In the past, before technology enabled submissions to be made from anywhere, anytime, homework could only be due at some time during the workweek, usually at the beginning of the next lecture. Students face the same demands as those of the past — including time to cook, clean, exercise, be with friends, or simply to take a break — but with the advent of computers, suddenly we are expected to make additional sacrifices on our end. If my economics homework was due at 7 p.m. on a Sunday night in 1950, the only options would be to either break into the school or my professor’s house to turn it in on time. That seems obviously unreasonable. Why then, with a modern student’s life retaining relatively identical demands, has that standard changed?
I also think it’s hypocritical for academic institutions to constantly espouse the importance of learning how to be an effective manager of your own time only to turn around and impose early due dates, as if they cannot trust us to even try to plan our own time effectively. Many experts, such as the NSHSS, tout the importance of having students improve their self-discipline; it’s thought of as one of the most crucial skills to learn before entering the workforce. As previously mentioned, professionals take the matter of separating their work and home lives very seriously, and many actively strive to make sure their time on the clock does not unnecessarily bleed into their time outside of office hours. Many students will soon join them, therefore, they should be well prepared for what they’re getting themselves into after their hard-won degree has supposedly trained them for what to expect.
If any professor is reading this, I beg of you to consider this issue. Burnout has been increasing rapidly compared to previous eras, and millennials and Gen Z are by far the most affected generations. The constant access to assignments via electronic devices, making one feel as though they can’t ever escape work and they are not in control of their own time, is one of the key reasons this is happening. In the past, the weekend was there to provide that ability to disconnect. I think its intended purpose is still just as relevant today, and in fact, it is more important than ever before. Give us breaks so that we don’t break down.
