Week 6 burnout. I feel it, you feel it, we all feel it. We’re nearing midterms but not quite there yet, work is starting to pile up, if you were ahead of the game a couple weeks ago you might be slipping now, etc, etc.
For me, I’m feeling all of this, plus a heavy feeling of inconsistency – I had a day last week where I couldn’t get to sleep until 4 a.m. only to wake up at 7, and then the next day I checked out at 9:30 p.m. for a solid 12 hours. My weeks feel super unbalanced too because my rest is being unevenly distributed: the first few days of each week are insanity and the following days are for recovering. I feel lopsided, uneven, off center.
Ever since I was a part of The Stute, the mid-semester week off from publishing was always a debate. Should we take a week off? Should we not? I still remember one semester that I was advocating for taking a week off, and the Editor at the time voted against it, explaining that the news has to come out one way or another. The amount of admiration I have for this person and that statement is very large, don’t get me wrong, but I remember a little voice in my head vowing that if I ever became Editor I would instate a mid-semester break. Because I was tired af.
There’s a famous saying that goes something like “the news never sleeps,” which can mean a lot of things. An obvious one is the relatively recent ability to access news almost immediately – if something happens, within 20 minutes (or even less) you’re almost guaranteed to be able to find something about it online. Journalists crank out articles within minutes of an event, because nowadays, speed may be more favorable than accuracy: being the first to break a story might be more important than having all the facts or administering an in-depth investigation.
Another meaning the phrase can be linked to is the idea that maybe news never sleeps because it simply can’t – traditional news journalism, specifically at a small community level, can feel like an obligation. For local newspapers operating in a single town or city, there may not be any other news organizations covering events.
This is somewhat true for The Stute; even though Stevens does publish university news articles on stevens.edu, The Stute reports on a lot more, and it’s also archived in the Library. Our catchphrase “we write Stevens history” is legitimate! Sometimes it can be an overwhelming fact to process, that we’re essentially the only ones documenting Stevens history, but it’s also really exciting. Designing the front page of print issues is probably my favorite thing to do at The Stute – often I look back on Stute front page archives in awe of their resemblance to historical documents, even more in awe that issues I edit will be looked back on as historical documents as well.
So even though I love The Stute with all my heart, we are taking a break next week. Which may sound easy, but breaks in publishing are a little bit trickier than you may think – the following week you have to play a bit of catch-up on news, biweekly writer schedules can be tricky to navigate, and a pause in weekly production can slow down enthusiasm and motivation. But I think it’s worth it if it means we get to combat some of this week 6 burnout. We’re tired, and we don’t have a large enough staff where some people can take a week off while others take over (oh, what a dream!). So for next week, even though the news never sleeps, we’re going to sleep. Goodnight!
The Stute Editorial is an Opinion column written by the current Editor in Chief of The Stute to address and explain editorial decision making, discuss news and media issues, and develop a sense of trust and transparency between readers and members of The Stute.
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