Student Guide to Study Burnout

[EEEEEEP]

What is it?
Have you ever been studying or working really hard for school, and then you start to not bother over time? In the end, you feel like you are hopeless and resentful. It happens quite commonly in students today.

Study burnout is when are emotional and physically push yourself to the limit and collapse.

Stages of burnout
1.   You are feeling some stress, mental exhaustion and have a desire to prove yourself, achieve unrealistic goals and push yourself harder.
2.   Your own needs are beginning to be neglected (e.g. sleep and social interaction)
3.   Families and friends are being dismissed, and work is the only focus. You begin withdrawing furthermore from society.
4.    Feelings of emptiness start to set in, and so does depression
5.   The stress and anxiety result in physical and mental collapse as the person is not able to work
6.   No care or interest is felt towards school

What are some symptoms
Mental exhaustion – You may  start to get headaches and stop absorbing information
Declines in performance – This is when your results start going downhill, despite you putting in more effort
No motivation -  The student, AKA YOU, stops caring about school and study. You dread the thought of going to school
Behavioural changes – this may range from isolation, turning late to school, procrastinating more than often
Feeling hopeless and cynical – You may feel hopeless or do not find enjoyment in life and work. Everything you do is worthless and inadequate.

Why does it occur?
Some common reasons that this phenomenon occurs is overworking, unachievable goals and lack of boundaries

Overworking – This is when the individual partakes in more study/work than required.  Studying hard is a good thing, but when you study and work too hard, you don’t let the body physically and mentally recuperate. Your mind and body is like car engine… when you run it too hard, it will blow up.

Unachievable goals – When individuals set unachievable goals, such as obtaining 100% in every exam / assignment and getting 99.95 ATAR (Using these as random examples), they strive to do everything in their efforts to reach it. If it isn’t reached after a long period, they may give up.

Lack of boundaries – Individuals may not set boundaries for the length of their study and/or their mental sessions. Over short periods of time, this is fine but over long periods, you (the student) will perceive that “all I do is study”. Furthermore, the effectiveness and efficiency of your study will decrease, and it will take longer to do simple tasks.

Preventing burnout
Setting boundaries  - By setting boundaries, I mean set limits on study and work. The body needs time to replenish mental and physical resources. For example “After 3 hours I will stop revision” or “After I have done study for 3 subjects I will do no more”. 

Have a work/life balance – By this, I mean to not just pursue grades at high school or get away with too much relaxing (too much of anything is bad), but to have a balance of study and relaxation/non school related activities).  Focusing too much on one thing and an improper balance will result in the neglect of our personal lives and relationships.   

Social support – Having social support such as family  and friends is highly effective as it reduces stress in the individual’s life.  Furthermore having a social support allows you to have a good rant and feel supported!

Identify and control stress – Identify if you are stressed out (do you have the symptoms) and manage it in the healthiest way possible. Have fun! GO out! Socialise! Exercise!

[heids]

Excellent guide EEEEEEP and something that's *super* important because if you fully burn out you will not only risk your ATAR because you can't perform when burned out, you'll also risk your physical and mental health into the future.  Particularly bad burnout, especially if you try to STILL push through it, can lead to fucking terrible results, i.e. serious mental and physical illnesses.  As someone once said to me and I didn't listen - 'take the word of experience, here'.

I'd encourage you all to try and plan a list of ways that you personally can avoid risk of burnout!

[sarangiya]

how does one recover from burnout?
i.e. restore motivation?

[EEEEEEP]

how does one recover from burnout?
i.e. restore motivation?

Stepping away from study or reducing the amount that you do helps immensely. It helps to step back from it to refresh the mind, as well as to get into a good head space.

[sudodds]

how does one recover from burnout?
i.e. restore motivation?

If you experience a burn out, then 100% the best thing to do is take a break, and rest. However, for some people that may not be possible depending upon the proximity to their burnout and exams, so here is what I did when I went through a serious slump last year.

• SPOKE TO MY TEACHER --> This was really important to me, as it greatly reduced my stress. I'm the type of person that can't stand disappointing someone, which was part of the reason why I had a burnout in the first place, as I built this expectation of me that I could not sustain. Therefore, through telling my teacher what was going on, they where not only able to help me get out of the slump, but also I felt calmer knowing that they weren't expecting all of these things from me anymore.
• CHANGE UP YOUR STUDY HABITS --> Obviously since I burnt out, my study habits at the time weren't working for me, or more accurately my lack of study habits. I literally only ever studied when it was ABSOLUTELY necessary to, and thus I often found myself in the bad situation of cramming a few days before (maybe even the night of) and exam. This is burnout material 101, as not only did I not give myself a break, but I also lost a lot of sleep which meant that my mental state was really shit. After my slump, I began to organise my life better, create a study timetable and stuck to it, which meant that I now did not need to worry about not having enough time to study.

Anyways, these were the most important stuff for me, that helped me recover from a burnout and restore my motivation within subjects that before the stress of it all I forgot I actually enjoyed. I'm sure other people have some great ideas as well Hope this was helpful.

[sarangiya]

It helps to step back from it to refresh the mind, as well as to get into a good head space.

through telling my teacher what was going on, they where not only able to help me get out of the slump, but also I felt calmer knowing that they weren't expecting all of these things from me anymore.

 This is burnout material 101, as not only did I not give myself a break, but I also lost a lot of sleep which meant that my mental state was really shit. After my slump, I began to organise my life better, create a study timetable and stuck to it, which meant that I now did not need to worry about not having enough time to study.

Some great advice. Very much appreciated.
Keep it coming everyone ♡

[sudodds]

Some great advice. Very much appreciated.
Keep it coming everyone ♡

No worries I'm glad it helped! It is also good to remember that even though these years are important, they aren't everything, and there are so many alternative pathways to do what you want to do so don't stress If theres a will theres away!

[grannysmith]

I'll speak from experience here regarding burning out.

Long story short in year 11 I was just another keen bean like many others here on ATARNotes. I always felt the need to be 'ahead' in my studies. Although I was only undertaking one 3/4, Biology, I would force myself to study everyday and learn ahead of the class even if I really wasn't in the mood. There was always that feeling of guilt for not studying. Perhaps it was some general form of anxiety or maybe it stemmed from countless hours spent on AN seeing other people studying and posting questions about Unit 4 when we were only approaching the end of term 1 And the real kicker is this: most of my time spent 'studying' was not time spent 'learning' at all; it was all just a false sense of achievement and security that I had deluded myself into. I (delusionally) became comforted with the fact that I was 'studying' even if I wasn't absorbing any information i.e. it was highly, highly ineffective. The fact that I still had to cram (and I do mean cram) a couple days before every Biology SAC was testament to this self-deception.

Obviously, one can only maintain such an intensive (and indeed incorrect) approach to study for so long. And sure enough, by term 2 holidays I was stuffed. Burnt out. Out of motivation. I didn't study AT ALL during that 2 week break. By the beginning of term 3 I was so stressed out by the unproductive holidays that I almost gave up on studying entirely. It probably took a good couple of weeks to 'ease' back into the intensely wrong study regime that I had hitherto abandoned. It was basically this ongoing cycle of guilt and frustration that led me to burning out.
   
Let me tell you, this kind of mentality is extremely unhealthy. Luckily by year 12, I dropped this study method. And although the guilty feelings persisted, if I didn't feel like studying (which, surprise surprise, was the majority of the time) I simply didn't study. I only studied ahead for Spesh and Methods and this was merely because a) I enjoyed maths and b) it was basically just learning off the textbook and completing the questions. Even then, I still found myself cramming a couple of days before every SAC, feeling as unprepared as I was for the subjects that I never studied ahead for - Chemistry and English Language. And in hindsight I did better in my SACs for Chem/EngLang than Spes/Methods.

From the beginning of year 12 and even now in semester 2 of uni, I have yet to find/adopt an effective study routine which prevents excessive cramming, which itself is a result of both feeling and knowing that I'm totally unprepared for a SAC/test/exam 2-3 days out. But at least I managed to prevent myself from burning out for the entirety of year 12. And now that I'm in uni, it's an issue of finding the motivation that I once prided myself in having during VCE.   

Lastly, I personally think there's a distinction between burning out and a lack of motivation. The latter is usually a result of the former, but a lack of motivation in and of itself doesn't generally result in burning out. From my own experience, burning out is fundamentally a consequence of three: working too hard too often too wrongly. And those things themselves are probably a result of either an incorrect mindset/being misinformed/uninformed/lack of experience/a laziness to change ones ways (yeah, probably all lol).

My thoughts probably seem unclear/scattered everywhere and I apologise for that.

[ssarahj]

WOAH this is such an important guide, especially this time of year, how did I not see this until now.....?? loving your work EEEEEEP 

[EmileeSmith]

excellent advice ! love it !!!

[lyoko]

Thank-you! Still applicable even today