Burnout

All too frequently, the college grind weighs down on our mental health, and prioritizing self-care, investigating new and necessary creative outlets, or just taking a moment to meditate, become cumbersome tasks that are difficult to squeeze in between academics, extracurriculars, social obligations, and of course, eating/sleeping/taking showers. I won’t lie, but sometimes I even skip out on that very last one. I’m kidding… Recently, however, I’ve come to the inevitable understanding that we are obliged to treat mental health with the same definiteness we give advice to our girlfriends: “if he wanted to, he would,” we lament for our deserving friends who have been sidelined by their partners’ “schedules.” The same goes for our mental health. If you want to take better care of yourself, you should, regardless of anything else. 

With the same determination, we find ourselves searching for the Zeno-esque distance between the time and the deadline when procrastinating (the time being Achilles and the deadline being the tortoise), we should also search for all the outlets that would allow us to venture outside our cluttered, overworked minds. It can be anything, but these are some very easy ideas to help alleviate the effects of burnout.

Some virtual options available at our disposal that I quite enjoy are anonymous accounts on large media platforms and Pinterest. There is no curating our clout to be chased in an account meant to highlight only which that we are truly passionate about. The only interactable element of Pinterest is between yourself and the pictures you choose to find intrigue in. To search for more (for example, interacting with friends and family) would be a futile attempt because then your saved boards would look exactly the same and wouldn’t reflect your true interests at all. Creating anonymous Instagram accounts can also be largely gratifying since you can follow all the hashtags and art accounts without the interruption of your peers Ft. Lauderdale dump from Spring Break, as lovely as they look double fisting Tequila Sunrises on their hotel balcony. 

Another option that I have recently taken up is journaling. There is much less commitment to beautiful, flawless pictures in a notebook meant to serve as a creative diary. There is also more inspiration to be found in the world when you yourself are trying to find the beauty in it. Having a notebook reflect that beauty, both around you and within yourself, is a motivating way to take up new perspectives, explore the crevices of our minds, or store the dandelion you impulsively picked up on the way home from class on that first warm, sunny day that signified summer may be coming soon around the corner (though I don’t recommend doing this if you have allergies).

On that note, one very easy way to escape the depths of existentialism is to go outside when it is nice out. Many of us or our friends have friendly roofs thanks to the abundance of 3-4 story apartments in Hoboken that provide plenty of relief from the grass and pollen triggering all of the season’s misgivings. It does get a little windy at higher altitudes, but a few paperweights are all you need to bring with you to enjoy a snot-less sunshine to remind yourself that all is not wrong in the world. Perhaps you can also find more beauty to write about or illustrate in your notebook, or perhaps it will inspire your next Pinterest search: “Sunset skies.”

There are plenty more creative outlets to let your inner Dora the Explorer run wild, be it visiting an art museum with your friends, finger painting with abandon, reading your local newspaper to find the beauty around your campus (*cough cough like the Stute), and even just drawing smiley faces on your food with ketchup (when applicable). Although burnout can be plenty unavoidable with the current schedules and anxieties characteristic of the Gen Z college experience, and although I have wished for a Marxist society far more than I should admit given my pending Quantitative Finance degree, I find that my disposition changes dramatically based on how much I try to include these elements in my life, no matter how small or insignificant they might seem when I’m trying to catch up to the tortoise.

The Doodling Duck is an Opinion culture column written and created by Pooja Rajadurai to discuss art as it relates to pop culture, trends, and students.