Seeking Rest: Burnout

To finish off this series, I want to speak to a topic that every other college student I have met is more than familiar with, and that is burnout. While I know that you can experience burnout no matter what your circumstances are, I want to speak specifically to it in the context of college, simply because this is how I have grown to understand it. I have fallen victim to burnout countless times, and it often feels like a pattern that I can’t seem to get myself out of. So, I want to bring this to light, showing the reality of what happens when we don’t allow our bodies and our minds to get the rest that it needs.

Burnout culture

In my life, I have noticed an interesting contradiction. While I have never heard anyone talk positively about burnout, we tend to glamorize its exhaustion in a way that makes it acceptable, even rewarded. We as a generation have turned to glamorizing and romanticizing the entire “burnt-out college student” vibe, and this normalizing is terribly unhealthy. For those of you that may not be familiar with this, it is a lifestyle filled with sleepless nights, countless cans of energy drinks and cups of coffee, and purposefully pushing your body to its limits while telling everyone else about it. I myself have fallen victim to this countless times, simply because our society rewards us. On the surface, if I see a friend or classmate telling everyone about how they are running off four hours of sleep and two Celsius drinks, I will tell them that I am worried about them, and want them to take care of themselves. However, on the inside, I seem to grow in my respect for them, admiring how they have prioritized work over rest to such an extreme.

As much as I do not agree with it, I do believe that I understand how this culture has been created. For most full-time jobs, people walk into their office, do their work for the day, then leave it at the office when they head home. Even though they may have lingering thoughts throughout the night about what needs to get done, there is generally a healthy work-life balance that exists simply due to this physical separation of spaces. College is an entirely different story, because my social, academic, and career lives all exist on the exact same campus. My schedule causes me to flow constantly between my jobs, classes, and time with friends, and it is so much more fluid than a stable 9-5 job. As amazing as it is to be able to live alongside all of my friends, and get to immerse myself in a culture that I love so dearly, it becomes almost impossible to create this work-life balance. I can’t simply leave my work at work, because I end up doing homework during meals, and meet in a friend’s dorm to work on a group project. This has caused a constant pressure in my life while on campus to always have schoolwork in the back of my mind, which manifests itself as guilt any time that I am not checking an assignment off of my planner.

This right here is where burnout begins, when life becomes so fluid that there is a lack of boundaries. We were not created to be able to do everything at once, and to expect myself to be focused on schoolwork every waking hour of my day is not only unrealistic, but also unhealthy. Burnout isn’t just a part of life that we should accept will always exist; we have the ability to break this seemingly unending cycle and find a better way to live.

Finding rest

This semester, I am grateful to have a great community of people that are encouraging me to take breaks and find rest. I have an unhealthy tendency to push myself beyond my limits, and won’t allow myself any rest if there are still things to be done. I have a few friends that have noticed this in me, and have begun to speak up to tell me that this isn’t healthy. I didn't have this often in high school friendships, so it definitely was new to have friends be honest in this way to lovingly tell me that I was doing something that was harming me. Thankfully, though, they have helped me learn what it means to set boundaries that prevent burnout. Oftentimes, this looks like me setting boundaries for myself concerning how much work needs to be done in a night. In the weeks where I am doing too much and not giving myself rest, I have to write down what tasks are absolutely necessary to get done that night, and cut myself off afterwards. While it can be nice sometimes to get ahead on assignments, this cannot be a priority that is so high on the list that it refuses you from resting until every possible thing that could be done is completed. I have even begun to learn what it means to say no to things in order to keep my priorities in line. This even means saying no to attending a social event when that will surely end up in my body taking on too much in a day. This is an aspect that I have really struggled with, because I consistently prioritize spending time with people over getting sleep.

So, I would encourage you to learn what types of boundaries need to be set in your life to help you prevent burnout, and find people in your life that will be honest with you in telling you when you need to set those boundaries. Having others help you with these boundaries keep you accountable, and give you another perspective for the days you feel so stuck in your own mind. We actually see biblical accounts of this as well, as Jesus led his disciples into spaces of rest amongst busy days: “and he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat.” (Mark 6:31). We were not made to fight burnout on our own, but instead God has given us people to help guide us in these struggles, and encourage us to find quiet spaces to rest and boundaries to set up to protect us from getting too ensnared by the world.