4 tips to avoid burnout

Stress is not a new phenomenon for college students, but something less talked about is burnout. Burnout is a condition of physical, emotional and mental exhaustion, most often caused by prolonged stress. Common symptoms of burnout are lack of creative inspiration, motivation energy. It is as terrible as it sounds and often goes unnoticed until it becomes overbearing. 

While burnout is common, it doesn’t have to be inevitable. Here are four tips to avoid burnout this semester:

1. Don’t take on more than you can handle 

This may seem obvious, but it is true. College is all about discovering new avenues. For the first time in your life, you are on your own to explore and determine your life’s direction. While you should monopolize your college experience, do not feel you have to do everything. Or at least, you have to do it all at once. Try to limit your extracurriculars for more free time. Consider switching your extracurriculars each semester to experience more. Beyond extracurriculars, do not take too many classes at once, either. Work towards graduation, but do not overwhelm yourself with too many classes. 

2. Stay organized 

While everything is usually calm and easy in the first few weeks of the semester, assignments easily pile on top of each other later on. Keeping track of your assignments, Zoom classes and extracurricular activities will lower stress. Use calendars, set reminders, write yourself notes. Everyone thinks differently so how you stay organized will look different than your roommate. Find a system that works for you and stay with it.

3. Avoid procrastination

Whether you’re a serial procrastinator or only an occasional one, we all do it at some point. Try as much as you can to avoid it — give yourself plenty of time to work on assignments. Do not wait until the day before or the day of to start a project. Staying organized will help with this. 

4. Prioritize self-care 

Self-care isn’t just going to the spa, it is being aware of your emotions as well as your energy level and being able to adapt to it. Take care of yourself. Take breaks when you need to. Spend a night bingeing Netflix to clear your head, eat your favorite food and hang out with friends. Make sure you set aside time to take care of your emotional needs. 

College is stressful. Do not make it worse for yourself by enabling stress factors to develop and grow. Take an active part in making your semester as pleasant as possible. 

Dara Lusk was born and raised in northern Virginia outside of Washington, DC. She is majoring in English with an emphasis in Technical/Professional Writing and a minor in Anthropology. When not writing she loves reading and annotating classic literature.

—dara.lusk@usu.edu

@dara_marie_