Burnout is something that I have dealt with every single semester since I started my college journey. I would like to believe that I am a pretty busy person during the school year. Just like a lot of full-time college students, I have a job that I give a lot of my time to throughout the week. On top of that, I also have a lot of tasks outside of school and work, such as homework, weekly posts on the Her Campus UMass Boston TikTok page, and just overall maintenance around my apartment. All of this while trying to make space to hang out with friends as well. Completing all of these tasks every single week can get tiring, and what’s crazy is that I know that there are other people out there who have way busier schedules than me. Everyone talks about having burnout, but nobody talks about how it actually can affect you and your motivation. I think talking about burnout, especially in the middle of the semester, is especially important to keep people from giving up on themselves.  Â
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, burnout is defined as “exhaustion of physical or emotional strength or motivation usually as a result of prolonged stress or frustration.” A lot of people only associate burnout with physical exhaustion. But, what a lot of people don’t realize is that mental burnout is also common. Burnout can affect people in many different ways. For me personally, when I get the feeling of mental burnout, I tend to feel drained, alone, and incapable of a lot of things that I know I can do regularly. These feelings affect me personally because I have found that I always perform at my lowest in every aspect of my life when I am experiencing mental burnout. I also feel like I don’t have a good work-life balance currently, and I haven’t felt like I’ve had a good work-life balance in a while. I think that contributes to my mental burnout as well because I always feel like I am doing something school or work-related. I have very few moments throughout the week where I have free time, so when I do, it feels almost depressing because of the fact that I haven’t had relaxation in what feels like a long time. I feel like there has to be some way to get over this hurdle that I go through every single semester, right?
Although I haven’t found any good ways to deal with mental burnout that work for me, I do have a few things that I like to do to get my mind off of it. Those few things all involve self-care. I make sure to dedicate at least a half hour of my morning or night routine to self-care. For me, that is usually doing my skincare and makeup routines because that is what I love and enjoy outside of school and work. But this can vary depending on what you love to do. For example, you could read, journal, crochet, etc. I love taking even a little bit of time out of my day to enjoy what I love the most outside of my commitments. If I’m going to be completely transparent, I am not good at separating my own personal time from work time, especially since I am a student with lots of homework throughout the week. But, I am always looking to improve the way I approach mental burnout because it tends to always come back around to me towards the middle of every semester. But I know that everyone who decides to read this article will get through it. We will all eventually be able to manage our mental burnout and busy schedules like professionals.