Tips to Avoid Academic Burnout

By: Darrell Clarke

These days when it comes to school, I feel like experiencing burnout is a daily occurrence. 

On a regular day, I’ll have a multitude of schoolwork to complete, leading me to feel burned out by the end of the night. Recently though I’ve been trying to work on this problem. In this article I want to provide some of my fellow SFC students with tips that have helped me lessen the feeling of burnout through a semester. 

In the start of making this article, I wanted to see why others experience burnout. In my search, I found that almost every college student experiences burnout in the same way. Most students get to a point where they feel it's extremely difficult to balance school, personal life, and other endeavors. I personally feel the same, once you get to a point where you're overwhelmed by all the assignments on your plate, you are experiencing academic burnout. Though it may seem impossible there are many ways to ward off academic burnout. In this part of the article, I will give you some ways to do so.

The first tip is to know when to take a break. In today's world, everyone feels like you should power through everything. When you “power through” schoolwork all the time you eventually grow blind to the work you're producing. All your attention gets placed into production instead of efficiency. When you allow yourself to take a break, and not just any break, a substantial break you give your brain time to further assess the assignment at hand. So many times I’ve tried to just power through an assignment even though I was tired, leading to poor work output.

The last tip I want to give is to try meditation. If you can set aside time in your day to meditate then do so. In a Columbia University Medical article they go into the benefits of meditating. In the piece, they claim that meditation can help reduce anxiety and depression. Additionally, researchers believe that meditation can help with concentration and overall focus. Personally, I feel the researchers are right. Every time I meditate I feel blank after and it's almost as if I took a mental break.

All things considered, academic burnout is very common so don’t feel like you're doomed. If you try the two tips I’ve used and given you in this article, you’ll most likely see some success in avoiding academic burnout.