Whether it was rushing to finish a report for a Professional Development course you were taking during a co-op term, or while fighting to stay focused on your English assignment when you felt overwhelmed by a million external stressors, there’s no doubt that at some stage in your academic career, you’ve experienced writer’s block or as midterm season is underway, academic burnout.
For me, wrapping up my fourth year and getting ready to head into my final year of my undergraduate career this fall, I was realizing that the self-imposed pressure to achieve a certain grade or result sometimes overwhelmed me so much that I felt hesitant to begin a paper or feel confident when starting a project. Other times, such as around midterms or when a study term wrapped up, I felt so burnt out from the work I’d put in that term, I struggled to feel refreshed for my upcoming work terms.
Feeling emotionally drained, struggling to stay focused, having chronic headaches, or insomnia, are all common symptoms of burnout. Often, taking a moment to acknowledge how we’re doing emotionally and physically is the first step to helping ourselves feel better.
So, whether you’re struggling with procrastination this study term, are feeling burnt out from a spring term with no reading week, or are longing for a chance to re-invigorate yourself while on a work term, we’ve gathered some tips and tricks to help you beat feelings of academic burnout.
1. Accept today
Today doesn’t need to become the day you overcome every obstacle. Today might be the day you write one page of your lab report or if you’ve been neglecting your workouts, do a 10 minute workout video or walk. The point is to focus on the 24 hours you have in front of you to get closer to the dreams waiting for you. Break down large tasks into a reasonable goal for today and focus on doing your best today. Over time, you might notice that in focusing on accomplishing the day, you’ll gradually accomplish weeks of focused effort with less stress by focusing on the present moment, a day at a time.
2. Believe in what you’ve already accomplished
When we’re constantly moving forward in our lives, relationships, academics, and careers, sometimes we forget to look back on our accomplishments. If you’re in first year, look back on the hard work put in during your high school years and be proud of your admission to UW and how your hard work enabled you to be here today. If you’re already well into your degree at UW, reflecting on earlier years and tough courses you were able to get through can remind you of times you stayed resilient and how it paid off. Looking back, the required statistics course I took my second year definitely taught me the art of perseverance and paying careful attention during lectures – it also taught me I can handle tough courses and reach success!
3. Have faith in what is possible
While chatting with a peer at UW, I learned they felt down about their career prospects post-graduation. They still had a full year left before their convocation, yet believed there weren’t many career doors that would be open to them. Although I understood the fears, I equally believed that there are also far more possibilities in life and in careers than we can sometimes presently notice. Having worked in the field of Information Technology for many of my co-op terms, I’ve come to realize that with effort, we can become quite proficient in fields not typically relevant to our field of study. If you feel down about your future or the job market, sometimes choosing to have faith means believing that the path meant for you will happen, so long as you maintain openness, determination, and flexibility.
4. Invest in friendships and value your ‘weak ties’
An article from Psychology Today highlights the importance in developing and maintaining positive relationships with others as crucial to overcoming burnout. While it can be easy to neglect friendships when feeling down or overwhelmed academically, it is essential to realize that investing in our friendships during such times can help us feel better faster. A publication by the American Psychological Association touches on how friendships can reduce the risk of depression and boost overall life satisfaction. The article also mentions the idea of ‘weak ties’ and how casual acquaintances can boost our mental health. Although close, strong friendships are evidently healthy, research finds that when people run into casual acquaintances more often, be it the grocery store cashier who remembers your inside joke or the librarian who always waves at you when he sees you browsing the shelves, study participants reported higher levels of happiness. A higher number of weak-tie interactions people experience in a day appears to provide individuals with brief moments of connection that, as they accumulate, can support a sense of feeling seen and perhaps even understood by others, beyond those we feel closest to.
5. Address current emotional roadblocks
University life can get tough. Maybe you feel disappointed about failing a course last term, unmotivated after constant co-op job rejections, or heartbroken after seeing a romantic interest move on with someone else. Sometimes journalling, sharing with a friend, booking a counseling appointment, or channeling that emotional energy into a physical activity at the gym, can be enough to move these emotional weights off our shoulders and lighten us enough so we can get back to running lightly towards what matters most.
Whether you’re writing the first paper of your academic career or finishing your thesis, you’ll come to find that writing, for instance, is a process that flows through some moments and stalls others. You can trust that when you tune in deeper to yourself and where you’re at emotionally, the best kind of writing and the most meaningful academic triumphs, often arrive in the moments just after we begin to believe in ourselves again.
