How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a College Student
Everyone has heard someone say “college will be the best years of your life” before, but there are definitely times it can feel like the opposite. Most if not all students will feel burned out, overwhelmed, and excessively stressed at some point in their experience. This is completely normal, and as long as you recognize it and actively employ strategies to mitigate it you will get back to your usual self in no time.
First, let’s think about what burnout can look like when you are a college student. There are a ton of different feelings that are all indicative of burnout, but I will use myself and my own experience as an example. For me, burnout is as simple as decreased or complete lack of motivation. I am typically interested in the subject matter of my major and my other general education classes as well, but I have definitely had times where I feel absolutely zero motivation to work on either of them. Beyond that, I have been involved with different extracurricular activities throughout my time at DePaul as well between clubs, research, and jobs, and the burnout impacts my motivation for those as well. Overall, if you are feeling unmotivated, down, or even just impartial about any of the aspects of your life that you are typically interested in and motivated about, you might be experiencing burnout and should think about addressing it.
Now, how are you supposed to address it? For me, it is a combination of goal-setting and scheduling that tends to work best. When I am feeling the most burnout, it is due primarily to non-interest in whatever I need to work on combined with a feeling that there is just too much work that needs to be done. This can be mitigated by first looking at what you need to get done and breaking it down into smaller, more manageable and achievable tasks. This lets you see that it really is not as bad as you thought, and gives you a sense of accomplishment when each step is completed. Next, you have to make and stick to a schedule. Give yourself work time, but also give yourself break times and be generous at first. If you start down a path of working for hours on end and forcing yourself to continue until you finish the entire project you are begging to feel burnt out. Try both of those steps and you will surely feel better than you originally felt about your workload and motivation.
Another crucial piece of this puzzle, particularly for the motivation aspect, is to connect with why you are doing something. Typically, you are either choosing to do something (i.e. you signed up for it at some point earlier) or you have to do something for some university-related or other requirement. If you chose to do something, I have found it is super helpful to think about why you initially signed up. To give an example, I was once super burnt out of my research project and wanted to stop working on it. However, I thought about why I signed up initially, to learn and develop practical skills in my field, and also that I was in a privileged position to be able to work on the research, and that got me right back in. If you are having a problem with some requirement that you have less of an investment in, like a gen-ed class for example, it can then help to take a step back and think about how it fits into the whole of your college experience. Random classes may seem useless or uninteresting, but they are important for your degree progress, and this is also likely one of the only times in your life that you get to participate in classes and learn from experts!
Burnout is a natural experience that practically everyone goes through. It can feel like nothing will ever help to get rid of it, but that is not true. There are tons of strategies to get through burnout, beyond just the ones I brought up in this post, and you can utilize those to power through and get back to your usual self. I hope you now feel more equipped to take on your college experience, and I am excited for you to make the most of it!
~Jeff