College Burnout, Confusion, and Doubts

To my college friends, so you have been in college 😆. Great. Wonderful. I’m joking 🙃. Hi, if you are new here, I do college posts every year to wrap up what college is like or things I wished I knew going to college. I will leave those posts linked below; they are a fun time! So, when I was thinking of what I should write for this college post, I honestly did not know. Then it hit me like the truckload that junior and senior year of college is like: BURNOUT. YAYYYYYY 🤪👏🏼.

I feel like many college people go through burnout or this point of not knowing what to do anymore or what direction you wan to take. Or maybe you haven’t been to college and you have felt burnt out and did not know anymore in your work or life in general. This blog post is for you too.

The first time I heard the word burnout was when I got into watching Youtube. Classy, I know. I was watching Alisha Marie (LOVE her channel!) circa 2018 when she had blonde hair and she took a break from Youtube because she felt burnt out creatively. And I was like, “What is this burnout she speaks of?” I have never heard of burnout before because I have never been burnt out or haven’t seen friends or people in my life burnt out. But as Alisha Marie talked about how unmotivated and uninspired she was to create content, I was like, “Oh, okay. Burn out is feeling like you are literally burnt out.” Burnt out in the way you feel like you can’t go anymore and you are just running on exhaust.

The way I think of burn out is like a car. You fill up the car—it has all this energy. Then you drive the car, and you keep going as long as the car will take you. Over time, the car loses gas—-it loses energy. Naturally, the car slows down and the more tired it gets. Then the car hits empty. But when a car hits empty, it is never truly empty because there is some gas left in the car as a safety net (I heard this from somewhere, but I could be wrong). So, at that point, the car is running on exhaust—-on its last tires—trying to make it somewhere to refuel or energize, but at the same time, it is losing all its energy in the process.

And that is what junior year felt like for me.

After the summer of sophomore year, I was all fueled up, ready to learn. I chugged along every week and month. Then I grew tired,

I cried so many days,

I felt overwhelmed,

I felt stressed,

I felt tired.

I felt exhausted.

Then I had winter break.

And then I had the worst sense of burnout my spring semester.

I cannot express how many times I had a mental breakdown and sobbed on my knees.

I cannot express how crowded my mind felt with all the things I needed to finish.

I cannot express how tired I was knowing I had this entire list of unfinished assignments I just had to do. And when I finished one thing, a new assignment would come.

I cannot express how burnt out I felt.

I felt burnt out before spring break and I felt like I was running on exhaust from March to this point when I am writing this on my last few days of spring semester. I am EXHAUSTED and DRAINED. I have never craved a break so badly.I never understood what burnout was until I truly went through it this semester.

And I am not writing how tired I am because I want to scare anyone going to college or who are freshman and sophomores. But I just want to shed light on how burnout is real and it does take a toll on you in every aspect of your life. I will later talk about ways to prevent burn out or to not feel as burnt out so you do not have to feel like how I felt.

Because when I felt burnt out, I was not the best version of myself and I could tell.

I was irritable with people. I was snappish. And that’s not me. I am not proud that that was how I reacted to others because I came from a place of so much overwhelming stress that anyone who did not feel the stress I felt irritated me because they had a choice of what they could do with their time while I had homework. And I did not like thinking that way. Other people’s happiness should not make me irritated. But I was. Because I came from such a tense state of mind.

I was sadder than I have ever felt in a long time. I have a history of intense sadness, and I do not want to use the word depression because I have not been diagnosed as depressed. However, I do feel like I have come to a point where I want to seek help. I do not feel like the sadness or stress I feel everyday from school is healthy. I literally fell into a spiral where I felt school trapped me or had me in a vice because I couldn’t do anything but school. I was not doing things that made me happy like reading, watching TV or movies, talking to friends, baking, blogging, writing, or moving my body because I felt like I had to do school work first. And it sucks when you know you need to make time for yourself, but you also feel like you have to do school work because that has to be a priority too. Or well, that’s how I see it. I would say I struggle with balance and knowing that resting is okay. I have always been the type of person to read quotes that talked about resting is beneficial because it rejunvqiantes or things like that or how resting is being productive. I would read those quotes and agree with them, but never put it to heart or practice. I needed to rest. I did not need to be productive a 100% of the time.

Gosh, knows it was not making me happy. School was not my happiness. And that’s where a lot of my burn out came from—-not putting me first. It felt like I was not the driver anymore in my life because I made school everything and it should not be that way. But sometimes it does feel like that. If you feel like that, know you are not alone.

While also going through a very hard time in school, I started to question everything. I have heard that when you are a junior or senior in college, you go through a phase of confusion or worry about what to do after college. Again, such a natural thing to experience! I did not know I would feel this way, but I did. I grew up knowing what I wanted to do since kindergarten: I wanted to be an elementary teacher. I am studying education and I am working towards my kindergarten dreams. So, I never thought I would ever question what I wanted to be when I grew up or who I wanted to be.

But I did.

I don’t know if it was the pandemic or the burnout or a combination of both—-probably both. But this was the first time I ever questioned if I still wanted to be a teacher. Because let me tell you, teachers do not have it easy. They have sooooooo much behind the scenes work no one appreciates as much as they should. They have soooooo much they do everyday that people do see but do not appreciate as much as they should. I give nothing but my absolute admiration for every educator out there because they go above and beyond in such an under appreciated and valued profession. I just do not understand how certain professions get paid more than teachers. Teachers literally lay the foundation for students to grow up to find their inspirations to be these other professions. We would be nothing without our teachers and yet we treat them like nothing. It upsets me everyday and I am not just ranting because I am aspiring teacher 😅. But I am coming from a place of compassion and gratitude for teachers. I also do not know if we under value or appreciate teachers because in the past teaching was thought of as a female profession. So, that is why teachers are underpaid? I don’t know. 😕 But it is sad.

But I have questioned so much this year if teaching was for me. It is such a weird and unsettling feeling to have a dream of yours not feel like a dream anymore and to feel like you might not even want it. I don’t know. It’s like when you buy a new car or new piece of clothing and it feels like the best thing ever and you have fantasized about it all your life. But when you have it and you really familiarize yourself with it, it becomes less fantasy and more reality. And the reality is not always in the brightest light. That’s how the last year felt like as I observed and went through my teaching preparation program. Teaching did not seem the shiniest to me.

And that made me so sad.

Did I want to be a teacher? If not, what would I do? I was only studying for an education degree. What would happen?

I did not know.

But part of me told myself not to give into my doubts because I know deep down, waaaaayyy deep down—-past my burnout deep down—-I loved working with kids and I wanted to be a teacher. I will always remember the first time I student taught for a third grade classroom. It was my first time.

I was sooooo nervous because I have never worked with kids before. I walked to the door of my mentor teacher’s classroom and I remember standing outside the heavy green door, hearing the chitter-chatter of students inside. I brushed my hair back, hiked up my backpack shoulders, and knocked. No answer. Anti-climatic, I know. Instead, I pushed open the door and was taken back to when I was in elementary school—-the colorful walls, the table group desks, the posters, the little corner library. All of it was a dream—-a beautiful, wonderful dream. I walked around that day, talking to students, trying to understand what they were doing and learning. Gosh, we’re kids learning in such a different way than I remembered. I had no clue how I could have been any help to them 🤪. PLTW (Project Lead the Way) who? I don’t think students do that anymore, but gosh was I LOST when my mentor teacher mentioned that, I was like, “Huh?”

I had absolutely not idea what they also did in social studies, math, reading, or writing. I honestly had no merit to help the students because gosh knows I gave some of them some very wrong information 😂. Ooops. Oh well. One of my favorite moments with the students was doing art lessons with them because they usually did academic tasks, so art got lost in the mix. I was happy to bring some color and creativity to their life. But interning for a third grade class was one of the best experiences. I loved the students. I loved my mentor teacher. I loved the feeling of helping the students no matter how bad my help was. I loved making connections with everyone. And I just felt like I belonged in that classroom.

And you don’t just get those feelings for nothing.

So I know teaching is what I want to do.

I just think when you do something too much, it makes you not like it as much. It is kind of like that saying how too much of a good thing is a bad thing. I have had too much of learning about teaching semester, that it has made me question everything I thought I believed.

I recently started listening to Emma Chamberlin’s podcast, Anything Goes, and I will say it is definitely one of my new favorites. I listened to her episode about burnout and I will link it below. I loved listening to this episode because it reminded me that I wasn’t alone in my burnout. As much as I have stayed home and done school by myself, I am not alone. It feels sooooo lonely to do school online because you do not get to hear people mutually struggle with you and there’s no one to really vent to. When I was in person in high school and in my freshman and sophomore year of college, I at least could turn to my table partner and vent about how much work we have or how tired I was. Or I would often walk with my friends to class and we would talk about the assignments due and how this teacher was this way or that. You know, the typical school vent session. I haven’t had that with online learning, so I felt burnt out by myself.

It’s not an easy experience to bear alone.

It’s not.

And I feel like that’s why I felt sadder and just kept burning out. But listening to Emma talk about burnout reminded me that we are all going through it, or will go through it. That no one is alone in what we go through, but sometimes we just never talk about it. I guess that is why I wanted to write this blog post.

Burnout is normal. You are not any less motivated or uninspired because of how burnt out you are in the moment.

You are not your burnout.

In the podcast, I the podcast episode, she also talked about how burnout can be hard for those in school or in creative jobs. She also discussed ways to prevent burnout and she answer questions related to burnout. It was a very insightful episode that I highly recommend.

I also recommend listening to her Advice Session #10 because it provides deep reflective thoughts. In this episode, she briefly talked about how your job did not need to be your passion, but your job should be something that allows you to do your passion. Because a passion becoming your job and being tied to can make the fire beneath the passion dwindle. She did not say that verbatim, but that was the summary I formed from that portion of the episode.

What her advice meant to me was that sometimes we get set on the idea that our passion has to be our profession or we want our passion to be our profession. That way we love what we do and we are passionate about it. However, sometimes when we turn our passion into our profession, it gets complicated because there is money involved, a lot more time and effort than we thought went into our passion. And then we soon tire of our passion and it comes to a point where that passion—-that thing we dreamed so long of doing because we think it will lead us to being more fulfilled in our jobs—-is not there anymore. Our passion is no longer there—our work just becomes the profession.

And that is what I felt like happened with my burnout thoughts. I had this passion of wanting to be a teacher, but the more time and effort I put into it, that passion faded. Teaching just became teaching and I did not want to do the work anymore. But what Emma also said in this episode (not verbatim) was how we should do jobs that allow us to go after our passions. For example, if we want to be a business owner, we might not start off as a business owner right away. We might work a retail job or in the food service industry. But those jobs can be gateways to starting the business–saving the money to open the business/launch or to have the additional time not working to work on our passion. So, I liked that advice because not everyone knows what they want to be when they grow up. That is perfectly fine. Do what you got to do in the moment or at that time to figure out what you may want to do.

Honestly, college is not about having it all figure out. College is about figuring it out.

It is about having the time and place to explore your options.

Change your majors.

Question your thoughts.

Travel.

Do something different.

It’s about using this time to learn.

And I think we need to stop making every teen feel pressured to know what to do by the time they are 17 or 18 because gosh knows no one is the same person they are at 17 or 18 to fully know what they want to do. I mean, maybe some people are, but it is okay to question those 17 or 18 year-old ideas and evolve. People change and evolve and your professions can change as well. That does not make you a failure. That makes you human.

So, questioning and doubting my direction made me human.

I also think part of my doubt came from the pandemic. Not being with students has not made me feel as inspired or connected to want to be a teacher. I did not get that euphoric feeling of walking into the classroom or engaging with the students. It’s hard to know what you want to do in a pandemic when you can’t truly get the experience you want.

But throughout my burnout and doubts I learned that I will get through it. You will get through it.

Cliché as it sounds, but this too shall pass.

I remember reading that when I was in the thick of my burnout. I have read or hear this quote numerous times, but it never meant much to me until I needed to hear it. Those are always the best quotes.

I needed to remember that my overwhelming, stressed, irritable, extremely sad emotions will not be forever. It will pass and I will get through it. I have been through burnout to a crisp, burnout past empty, and so much more. And whenever I thought I would not get through my burnout or things would not get better, I needed to remember that it would.

YOU need to remember that you will get through this period in your life and that the reason behind your burnout will pass. YOU need to remember that when you have feel burnt to a crisp, burnout past empty, and so much more that YOU will get through it. When you feel that your burnout or things will not get better, You need to remember that it will. It might not feel like it, but it will.

Trust me.

I just got done with my last class of the semester, and I can tell you there are better days. There is light.

Ride your burnout through, let yourself acknowledge that you feel burnout, exhausted, confused, or doubtful. It is okay. Talk to someone about it, or you can always email or comment on this post to talk about how burnt out you feel. I want this place to be a safe space for anyone to come back to to feel less alone. I am always here 😊.

If you have never felt burnt out in your life, that is okay too. You might never feel that way, and that is more than amazing, but you might one day. I hope I shedded some help or light on burnout.

But if you ever find yourself feeling burnout or do not want to ever run yourself past the ache that is burn out, here are some of my tips. I am no doctor or professional, just a human being who wants to be there for you all 💕. If you have any tips as well, feel free to comment below.

Proactive Tips for Burnout

1. Talk to someone

This is literally one of the best things to do when you are burnt out. Talking to someone makes you feel less alone and it helps you to have someone there. Find someone who you trust or feel comfortable with. You could also find someone who you know has been burnt out or who feels burnt out like you. That way you can talk about your burn out together. Talking it out always.

2. Move your body

Move, move, move. Sitting all day in front of your computer or your work (especially with the pandemic) is taxing on the body and mind. I swear, I would be rich if I got paid for every minute I sat in front of my computer doing school work. And I have had the headaches to prove it. Also, sitting down all day has made my back tense, so there’s that. But one thing that has helped me is moving my body whether that is stretching, walking outside, going for a run, walking up and down the stairs, strolling around my house, or walking in place. It helps to move and get the body, blood, and mind flowing. There’s some research behind how movement helps refocus the mind, but gosh knows I am done with school and I do not want to do any more research 🤪.

Moving is good for you. Take my word for it 😄.

3. Go outside

Get up, put on your slippers or shoes, and go outside. Yes, you! Go outside. No, no, I don’t want to hear excuses, go outside even if it is raining. I’m JOKING 🤪. No, but seriously, go outside. Heck, even if it is raining, go outside and take an umbrella. I do that all the time. Literally go outside your house or wherever you live and just stand in your yard or somewhere for a good minute or more, and just let people stare. Because you are moving and getting outside. No one should judge you for that.

Going outside is beyond therapeutic and it always uplifts the mood. I think it has something to do with reconnecting with nature and being in the open air with the sun, wind, or rain (I’m not gonna researching it, but you can if you want). But there really is something magical that happens to your body and mind when you just stand outside or take a walk. It clears everything and it reminds you that you are just another person and there is more to life than the confines of the stresses you feel. There is clarity.

4. GO TO BED

Tuck yourself in at 10 o’clock and no later 🤪.

In all honesty, sleep is valuable. You need to sleep to recharge and rest your body and mind. Sleep also helps you process what you learn and to help you function the next day. If you lack sleep, you tend to be more irritable or unfocused the next day, so get your sleep everybody. I know how easy to say, “oh, it’s just sleep, it doesn’t matter.”

Sleep matters so much, so please do not feel like you have to stay up late and work just to get things done. Or because you want to get things done. I mean, if you need to work later until like 11 o’clock or later than by all means go ahead. But at least compensate for your sleep when you do go to sleep because your body and mind needs it. On this note, go to bed at a reasonable hour. If you go to bed at a reasonable hour, your body clock will wake up at a reasonable hour as well. So if you keep pushing yourself to sleep late, your body will want to wake up later and then you might feel like you are having such a late start to your day. And that within itself might feel overwhelming. So know when you need to sleep.

Also, pulling all nighters may not be the best if you are burning out or do not want to burn out. I have not pulled an all nighter because I know I cannot function like that, so do not think that just because you are in college and everyone does it, that you have to stay up all night to study or work hard. Your lack of sleep is not a flex. It is disheartening how we think that the less someone sleeps, the harder they must work and that we feel like we have to sleep less to equate ourselves to hard workers. It is sad.

Go to bed.

If you do not want to do your work or stay up late to do it, do not force yourself to stay up because you feel like you have to. Trust me, you are not going to get any work done. You might, but it might not be the best work you could have produced if you just took the time to sleep.

Naps help also. Ten minute, five minute, two minute naps. Sleep.

Sleep is also linked to health. If you do not get adequate sleep, your body losses time to heal and repair and do all these process that allow us to maintain good physical and mental health. I read that in one of my psychology classes, but gosh I could be wrong. So do yourself a favor, and get those zzzz’s.

5. Don’t do anything in a bad mood

This goes back to what I mentioned above, you are not going to do your best work if you are tired, and you are definitely not going to do your best work if you are in a shizzy mood.

Do not do work when you are angry, sad, overwhelmed, stressed, depleted, exhausted, worried, hangry, or any other complex emotion.

Do work when you are calm, happy, content, level-headed, and slightly tired.

When you are in a bad mood, it can reflect in your work and then later on, you might go back to your work and do it all over again because you were in a bad mood. Now, you are doing twice the work. So, when you find yourself in a bad mood, take a step back, take a break, go outside, move your body, or do something for yourself—-just do not do the thing that is making you have a bad mood.

6. Take a break

This is the best piece of advice I can give anyone who wants to prevent burnout or who feels burntout. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to take a freaking break. Trust me, I know, it feels unproductive to take a break. It feels wrong to take a break. I know. I understand. I always told myself I could not take a break until my work was done because I needed to finish it at that moment. Not everyone works like that. Take your break. Get off the computer. Do something else. Put the work away at a certain time and say this time to this time is me time. Do what you need to do to feel less stressed and confined by your work.

Take a ten minute break, a thirty minute break, take the weekend as your break. You do not need to work 24 hours a day seven days a week to feel accomplished or worthy.

I found this quote on Instagram and it resonated so much with me. Take your break. You deserve it and you need it. If you do not take your break, it will make you in that foul mood I talked about earlier, and then it becomes a whole spiral of continuous burn out.

Know your limits and do not push yourself over the precipice.

7. Do something for you

Work life balance is one of the most challenging things. I struggle with it everyday. It kind of goes back to breaks in feeling like they are unproductive. But doing something for yourself each day is not unproductive, it is necessary to ground you to who you are and what makes you happy.

Not writing, reading as much, watching TV or movies that much this past four months has not made me happy because I was not doing things for myself. I would constantly feel angry because I just wanted to do things that made me happy. When you tell yourself you cannot do the things that make you happy, it feeds into that burnout and hatred of what you are doing. Do not tell yourself you are not important to do at least one thing today for yourself. Do not tell yourself that your time could be better spent working than doing at least one thing for yourself. Do not tell yourself that you are not in control. You are. It might not feel that way, especially as a student, but trust me, you are.

Read.

Draw.

Run.

Cry.

Eat.

Shower.

Sit down.

Lie down.

Talk to a friend.

Journal.

Do something you like or something different that is not related to school. Do something that would make you happy. If you do not do that for yourself, it makes it much harder to feel like the burnout will get better.

Put yourself first as much as you can. It’s hard, but you will be grateful you did.

8. One day at a time, one task at a time

I have a friend I met in online school and she taught me the value of taking it one day at a time. She said once that she likes to do things one day at a time and task by task. It wasn’t until I felt overwhelmed everyday that I knew what she meant—-until I valued what she meant.

You cannot do it all in a day. Rome was not built in a day.

You cannot get every little thing on your checklist done in a day (and if you can, all the love to you).

And that is okay if you cannot do it all in a day. Take it day by day and task by task.

Focus on what you want to get done today by prioritizing your tasks, then look at your calendar and ask yourself, “What can I do tomorrow or the other days?” Save the tasks you did not do for those days. For example, let’s say you have a class on Wednesday and you do not meet again until the next Wednesday. Your Wednesday classes just dumped a whole bunch of work on you. You still have work due for your Thursday classes. What do you do?

Not your Wednesday class work, that’s for sure 😅. Past me, would have said to finish the Thursday class work and then do the Wednesday class work just to finish it. And if that is what you thought to do, there is absolutely nothing wrong with taking that path. But if all you can do that Wednesday is finish the Thursday class work, then that is more than enough. You can work on your new Wednesday class work another day. You do not need to finish everything in one day.

Schedule your work out, know your limits, and do your best.

Your best is one day at a time.

Also, thinking of it as one day at a time is less daunting than seeing everything as the work you have to do that entire week or month. I know it is helpful to plan for the week and month, and go ahead and do that, but also remember to focus on just that day when you do so.

There is also so much power with small steps than big steps. I recently saw this photo of two people climbing up a ladder where one ladder has little rungs leading to the top. The other ladder had three to four rungs leading to the top. The second ladder represented how we take big steps because we feel it is the easiest way to get to the goal first. But taking big steps is the harder way to reach the goal. Taking little steps—-taking it day by day—-requires a lot more time and concentration, but it is more manageable to get to the goal.

Remember that.

In closing, I just want to leave you all with this quote for when you need to hear it. This poem could be used for different contexts, but I will let you decide on its meaning 😊.

“There will be times when you won’t feel like yourself, the world looks like it’s upside down,

it’s all too overwhelming inside, it’s all too

congested in the heart…

When it gets like this, just remember that it’s

temporary. You will get through it. Few people

let you down but you still have yourself. You are

disappointed in yourself or someone else, but you still have yourself. You’re still breathing . . .

you still have yourself. you will get through it all

and it will be glorious. You’ll see.”

– raf

(feel better)

You will get through this. It is okay.

As always, with love,