Burn out

It’s that time of the semester—midterms and projects have come to a head and your professors have all assignments due on the same day to torture you. You’ve survived midterm season at least once, depending on what year you are, and surely, you can do it again.

Midterm season can be brutal, especially for juniors. In those assignment-filled, unimaginably difficult semesters, you may lock yourself in your room for hours to understand organic chemistry, multivariable calculus, or another classically difficult course. Next to your notebooks and laptops, I guarantee you have an energy drink or a coffee to keep you awake during your study marathon.

While cramming and drinking copious amounts of caffeine have been normalized, and in some cases it is inevitable, it is important to acknowledge when we have hit a wall. Sometimes we shrug it off because we are too prideful. We put on a face and trudge through the day with vacant eyes and a foggy mind. This is what burnout feels like. It becomes hard to focus, and we are easily agitated due to lack of sleep and self-care.

Burn out is very real and we should acknowledge it when we are stretching ourselves too thin. If we don’t address it, it is detrimental to our performance and our health. Pulling all nighters three nights in a row can be done, but it doesn’t mean you should. The sleep loss and caffeine consumption will wreck you for the rest of the week and cause mood swings. I don’t think any of us want to trigger a stressed out engineering student after two days of no sleep and insane amounts of exams and homework. That’s a nightmare we don’t want to see.

I’ll admit that I have been burnt out many times. I have drunk countless cups of coffee to prepare for midterms through the wee hours of the night. I wanted to prove to myself that I can do whatever it takes to succeed. What I should have done is plan ahead for exams and projects to prevent myself from sleep deprivation and lashing out at those I care about. At the time, I didn’t care about the consequences. I was ignorant.  After doing that for so many semesters, I’ve learned how to make the most of my time and my studies. I know what I want to learn and put energy into the right areas. It’s better to work smarter, not harder.

When you are burnt out, be honest with yourself and push the brakes. It is better to take a ten minute break than to run yourself into the ground. It is not a competition of who slept the least or how many cups of coffee you needed to finish an essay. Those aren’t achievements since they are hurting rather than helping you. With that being said, don’t look for an excuse to avoid your work and put it off until the last minute. Going for a spa day after studying for 20 minutes is not the self-care I am talking about. Set goals with rewards—I’ve noticed that it helps motivate people to get their work done while also getting something in return. The learning and hopefully the good grade you receive are a reward in and of themselves, but treating yourself to a sandwich from your favorite shop never hurts.

Learn don’t burn. 

Senioritis is an Opinion column written by one or two Stevens student(s) in their last year of study to discuss life experiences during their final year at Stevens, and other related subject matter.