Burnt Out Instead of Sunburnt

If your life isn’t scheduled down to the minute, you’re doing it wrong. Or at least that’s how it’s felt since being in college.

In addition to a full class load, many college students tackle a part-time job, try to get the “college experience”, and have a few internships sprinkled in. Free time seems out of the question. We fill our planners to the brim and work until the sun comes up the next day and we do it again and again. Since the first moments on campus, students have been told to bulk their resumes and always work towards the future; do the most you can while you have the time. We did just that. However, as we piled our plates too high and charged full speed ahead, we’ve gotten low on fuel. We are burnt out.

The pandemic capitalized on burnout with everything being from home. It’s no longer working from home, but living at work. Without this separation between work, school, and regular life, it all blurs together and we never seem to stop. The one thing that has always kept college kids going, even when we’re on empty, are the scattered breaks built into the school year— specifically, spring break.

Our dreams of white sandy beaches and ski slopes have slowly melted away as universities across the nation have stripped students of their spring break to reduce the spread of COVID-19. If colleges cancel spring break they reduce the opportunity of students traveling and potentially contracting the virus and bringing it back to campus. The logic behind this move is best to help find a near end to the pandemic that has plagued the nation, and we can all agree with that. The cancelation of spring break is well-intended, but it’s done at the cost of students’ mental health.

I am no stranger to burnout. Due to my inability to say no and the constant desire to be busy, I put too much on myself and have quite literally color coded my life and scheduled it minute by minute. Each semester I feel my stress start to build and the burnout around the corner. By the time spring break rolls around, I am holding on by a thread and I know that break is what helps get me through the remaining weeks of the semester sanely.

With spring breaks being cancelled at multiple universities, and many more considering following suit, I’m not sure how students are going to handle it. Yes, days off here and there are beneficial, but it is simply not the same as a week off to recover from midterms. The hustle culture in college has already caused severe impacts to our mental health. Continuing the marathon without a water break will be detrimental.

Virtual learning has pushed the boundaries between work and life and doesn’t know when to stop. Even if schools haven’t cancelled spring break, professors are still assigning projects that are due in the middle of the break. Classes may not be occurring, but we’re still responsible for major projects due in the middle of our time off. We can’t seem to catch a break and it seems to be catching up to us.

Constantly stressed about school with no time to stop, we are unable to catch our breath and recoup for the remainder of the semester. At some point we're not going to be able to push through the stress slump and keep going, and some of us may be getting to that point rather soon.

We thought that 2020 was the year that would break us, but 2021 seems to be spiraling down the same path. Instead of baking in the sun and laughing over drinks with our friends, we will be plugged in and frantically submitting projects before the deadline.

Rather than being sunburnt, we are simply going to be burnt out.

By Emma Bittner

Rom-Com fanatic and coffee connoisseur with a little bit of "I wanna save the world" in me.