It’s around that time where midterms are coming out, or if you don’t have midterms, you likely have projects and assignments. You are buried under the workload and feeling burnt out. It is normal to feel burnt out, either in your job or education, despite all the unhealthy methods and tricks a person used to get to that point. I am currently going through, by far, my worst case of burn out two months into my program after returning from a gap year. In a strange way, acknowledging it makes me want to do more work, as if I can just shrug it off and power through it without any rest. The issue is, you can’t wave away your phase of burn out even if there is more work to do. Believe me, I am no stranger to assignments and group projects, questioning if I am good enough, or if my work is good enough. Except that’s just it. Sometimes, you need to let your work be just “good enough” instead of the excellence you strive for. Sometimes you need to let yourself give less on an assignment, project, or test.
I realize there is shame to feeling burnt out. I haven’t heard anyone talk about it before. It comes from this dark shadow in your mind that comes from a place of doubt, that there is more to do, and this feeling that you can’t handle all that you need to do. It comes to the point where your mentality of “it’s not good enough” turns to “I’m not good enough”. You’re tired, but you feel like you can’t give yourself permission to be. Almost everyone just tells you to deal with it because if you’re a student, you’re expected to work hard. Just because you’re a student, doesn’t mean you’re not a human.
That being said, there is a lot of guilt that comes with letting yourself rest when you’re feeling burnt out, so it’s always going to feel like a lose-lose situation when you’re on either side of the burnt out phase. Here’s the thing about deadlines, tests, or any other form of assessment that I have to constantly tell myself: they are not going to change, they will always be there when you are finished having time to yourself. You might speed up the process in how ready you feel when you’re about to submit an assignment if you keep pushing yourself, but what will you lose along the way?