Student Blog: The Inspiration Plague: How to Cure College Burnout

Facing burnout as a college student always feels like it comes at the worst time; It's the peak of the semester, you have three midterms due, but you just cannot bring yourself to complete your assignments or create something new. I know this feeling all too well. Fortunately in my prior experiences of burnout, I have learned various ways to cure this plague. This is how I personally get rid of burnout during the peak of a typical semester, leading to a new avenue of inspiration.

Be honest with yourself: The first step in curing college burnout is to be honest with yourself about it. Often students suppress this idea of ‘burnout’ because they feel they don’t have the time to do something about it. Unfortunately, by doing this you create something I like to call ‘the burnout cycle.’ This vicious cycle begins by neglecting your burnout, choosing to work yourself out more, thus making the burnout worse. If you start to feel the first waves of burnout, ask yourself these three questions: “Is my typical workload starting to become too much? Am I struggling to finish simple tasks? Do I dread going to classes I normally enjoy?” Often being honest with yourself leads you halfway to the cure.

Indulge in media: This may seem like something one shouldn't do when needing to cure burnout, but trust me; Go watch some TV! Or even listen to music. Perhaps find something new to view, because what you may be lacking is creative inspiration. Furthermore, allowing yourself to be okay with leisure time while dealing with burnout can help rewire and reset your mind to a more balanced state. It also reminds you that binge watching your favorite show can totally fit into your school schedule! And who knows, maybe by watching your comfort tv show you’ll come up with an idea for a sitcom yourself.

Don’t be too hard on yourself: This may seem like an easy one to understand. Unfortunately, this point is one I’m still trying to work on. There are many things in our world today that make burnout far too common among current high school and college students (computer screens are one of them!) So, it is inevitable that you will one day experience burnout. School is designed to challenge you and make you stronger at what you do, but there will always come a time where it may feel like too much. That’s what being human is all about. With this mentality, it is much easier to find your way past burnout; You can’t avoid it when it happens…but you can overcome it!

As college students across the country start to make their way back into classrooms this month, please remind yourself and others to do the following: Take it easy, listen to your body and mind, and come up with a plan for how to rejuvenate yourself when burnout starts to creep in. You can always overcome burnout, but be proactive about it. Have a great start to the year everyone!