Burnout isn’t the frustration you feel following hours of study. It’s not just the fatigue you feel after pulling an all-nighter, and it’s not the disappointment of a failed test. Burnout is something more serious; it is a chronic issue—something that develops over several months or even years of enduring academic stress. It has lasting effects on students who suffer from it, yet still, it often goes unrecognized.
Mrs. Kelley Zavatsky, one of the academic advisers for freshmen and sophomores, is one of the first people who start to notice students suffering from burnout. Many days, students will run into her office or email her for an urgent conversation, “And when students come in, it usually starts off fine,” she said. “But once they start to [open up] more as we’re talking, they start to talk about how they’re just really stressed out.” Some students come in emotional and teary, worried about how many things they have to do. Others come in to say that they just can’t get everything done on time, or only to admit they just don’t know what to do.
“I see the exhaustion,” Mrs. Zavatsky said, “I see the emotions come out.” Sometimes, though, it can be more serious than just emotions. At a certain point, these students can start to suffer real, psychosomatic problems such as headaches, insomnia and depression, according to an article by the University of Georgia. Because of this, spotting burnout is one of the most, if not the most important factor in beating the “silent struggle,” and why Mrs. Zavatsky’s job is so important.
The pressure of needing to excel is common among a lot of students. Often beginning in high school, they are taught that succeeding in school is essential for succeeding in the rest of their life as well. This amount of pressure—knowing their life depends on what they do and don’t do in school—can take a serious toll on a person. It can push a student to keep trying to achieve higher grades and meet unrealistic standards, and this self-imposed pressure can quickly drain energy and motivation and cause an even worse situation. “It can be a combination of the academics, the after school commitments, or difficult classes,” Mrs. Zavatsky said, “But I think the burnout starts to happen when we start to stay up too late working. You don’t get enough sleep, you start to get sick, and it becomes just like a vicious cycle.”
Most importantly, though, burnout can bring a loss of confidence in academic abilities and a subsequent decline in academic performance. That constant strive towards success can actually end up bringing a student in the exact opposite direction.
One of the biggest causes of burnout, as Mrs. Zavatsky points out, is “biting off more than you can chew:” taking too many rigorous classes at once. “It can happen any year,” she said. “But I think sometimes, everybody wants to do everything; everyone wants to take the hardest classes, everyone wants to be in a lot of clubs, everyone wants to do sports, do theater, do music … I think it just comes down to taking on too much too soon, whereas I try to say it’s best to build on the rigor of classes—don’t feel like you have to do all the hardest things right from the start.”
When a student comes into her office stressed, she usually starts off by asking, “If something were to go away tomorrow, what would it be? What about that would make you feel better?” From there, she might start to encourage a student to alleviate a level of a more time-consuming class to take off some of that stress. “It might not be so much that a specific class is challenging, but a student having a hard time keeping up with everything at once.” Of course, while every case is different, Mrs. Zavatsky said that changing just one class level, not even multiple levels, is often enough to alleviate the built-up stress a student has. “You have to look at the big picture,” she said. “It’s not just the academics, but how to manage time. There’s only so many hours in a day.”
“Still, you don’t really know you’re burnt out until it’s happening already,” Mrs. Zavatsky pointed out. “It’s hard to recognize it until you’re already getting to that boiling point, when you’re starting to overflow with work.”
Many individuals can’t singlehandedly do much to stop this global problem. What most people can do, however, is to recognize how serious this problem is. Support systems need to be present in a community, and burnout needs to be taken seriously.
Students walk in the English hallway between periods. Something helpful that a student can do is just to realize when they need a break. “You only have so much time and energy,” Mrs. Zavatsky said. “Challenge yourself in the subjects you enjoy most; those you know you like doing. You can’t be necessarily perfect at every single thing.” (Photo/ Bruce Matsunaga/Creative Commons)
