I feel like I have written about burnout so many times before, but it usually happens at the end of the quarter. As a refresher, burnout is a state of mental, emotional and physical exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged express. Burnout often shows itself in constant exhaustion, even with sleep, a lack of motivation to attend classes or do assignments, and increased irritability. I often come across burnout by week 8 of every quarter.
It is telling that I can experience burnout so often, and it is usually for school when I have to take classes that make me uncomfortable and uphold the status quo. It is rare that I feel burnout for the work I do or for classes that I really love. It is always the mandatory classes that can create this feeling of burnout. And I understand the necessity of obtaining a well-rounded education with many different subjects, but it is also important to reevaluate the need of all the classes we are required to take.
I do not think the act of experiencing burnout is the worst part, but the reaction from others is where the harm is truly present. The lack of understanding of what burnout is and how we can work through it forces burnout even faster. In a perfect world, we would all be able to do the work we want and need to do, while taking breaks for our own mental health. However, the capitalist, work-centered world we live in continues to break us down while blaming us for the lack of production.
This does not even touch on the mental health aspects of burnout, and how people with depression or anxiety are more likely to experience burnout. And still, classmates, teachers, professionals, our society ridicule burnout and create an unsafe space where we can not prioritize our own mental health. I constantly see college students on social media proclaiming they understand mental health and burnout, and that they have experienced it themself, but also ragging on students who show the signs of burnout. There is no shame in taking a mental health day or skipping an assignment when you do not have the capacity, yet so many will judge others and act like this is the end of the world.
I dream of a society where we can take mental health and burnout seriously, where we do not diminish the experiences of others because it is not universal. I know that burnout is something we can work through, but until we learn to prioritize our own mental health, I fear we will never get through it.