Student Blog: Burnout May Be Strong, But You Are Stronger!

Burnout is such a real thing. I remember when I was younger, I had always heard about the term “burnout” and I had never actually known how it felt because at the time I had never felt that type of exhaustion. During the pandemic, I started making YouTube videos as a way to express my creativity since theatre was not accessible at the time due to safety precautions. I had so much fun expressing my personality online and learning how to find creative ways to make my videos engaging through editing software's. This continued on for about three years where I was consistently uploading videos once a week. It finally came to a point where it was getting really stressful and tiring to make these videos every week when not a lot of people were watching them. Every time I thought about making videos, it gave me this pit in my stomach. I didn’t know at the time what I was feeling and I soon learned that this was “burnout”. It was exhausting managing school, theatre, and making a video every week, so I soon realized that I needed to take a break until I could find the fun in creating again.

As I am now older, I recognize this feeling now when it comes about and I now know how to regulate it. At my school, we focus on learner profile traits that were established by the International Baccalaureate program and one of those traits is being “balanced”. This trait really sticks with me because I do a ton in and out of school which can be hard to manage with a regular personal life as well. In order to prevent this feeling of “burnout”, finding that healthy balance is essential to maintaining the reason you partake in whatever that may be causing your “burnout”.

As a high school student, burnout can be very common. I specifically remember in my freshman year, I had experienced an immense amount of burnout because I was not used to large workloads compared to middle school. One thing that I did do to keep myself from falling behind or giving up was making sure that I still always make time for myself. School can be super exhausting, because you are constantly inputting information into your brain 5 days a week and then using that information and practicing to use it in a practical manner. Thinking back to that learner profile trait of being “well balanced” is so important to maintain your steam in education. 

School is not the only thing that creates burnout for me, but I also find myself experiencing burnout in theatre as well. I have been doing theatre consistently since I was at the young age of seven and have learned and grown so much since then. I always used to think that theatre was just, you memorize your lines, learn music and choreography, add costumes, and you're good to go. As I have entered into the world of the more educational and professional side of theatre, I learned about how much more work goes into it than what I had thought when I was younger. Theatre is no easy task and when you are constantly putting that work in and using your creativity, it can get tiring. Sometimes when I am working on shows back to back, I can forget the reason I do it, which is to tell stories and express my creativity. In order to maintain the creative flow and the fun of it all, it’s important to remember why you do it in the first place. It also is so important to always take time to yourself and your well being.

As we can see, burnout is common and very real. I hope that you all can use and take something I talked about today to help motivate you to keep pushing to the end. Burnout is always gonna try and fight you to give up, but as an individual, you need to find that purpose you have to finish out strong and then in the end, you will be so proud of yourself (trust me, I know from past experiences). Make sure to always take time for yourself and find breaks here and there. Burnout may be strong, but you can’t let it win because you are stronger!