Roaming Reporter: How have Barons been impacted by burnout?

“I used to always do all the homework assignments and do them thoroughly and understand the lessons. Right now, I’m doing the homework just to do the homework, I’m not understanding it,  I’m just doing it to complete it. I used to do all of my homework as soon as I got home from school, I wouldn’t go on my phone or rest until all my homework was finished. Now after school, I will lie down in bed and if I don’t take a nap, I just scroll on my phone because I’m exhausted. My motivation is my fear of failure and I will do the bare minimum to not fail but I’m not excelling. If you put in the work now, future you will appreciate it,” sophomore Emily Do said.

“School feels very optional and I’m lacking motivation. I faced the effects of burnout a little bit in sophomore year, but it was way worse this year. I’m falling behind in a lot of my classes and it just feels like a lot of extra work. I feel drained all the time and as a result, I feel bad about my grades. I’m trying, I go to tutoring to kind of help manage my time. I try to make schedules and set goals. Don’t procrastinate and try to stay focused,” junior Emma Chavez said.

“I was doing okay in the beginning but I felt really unmotivated because it didn’t feel the same…My mental health hasn’t been at [its] best in the past five-ish of years and I didn’t think it could get any worse but this year definitely proved me wrong…I found that spending time with my friends (while social distancing) helped out a lot and made me feel better. I spend most of my day sleeping or laying in bed, if I feel like it I’ll text my friends. I only get up to eat and use the bathroom once my parents get home. [Know] you aren’t alone [and] there are other people that understand exactly what you’re going through. [I]t’s a pandemic, just because there are people able to get by and adapt doesn’t mean you can too, know your limits, and don’t let other people set them for you [because] they don’t know you the way you know yourself. This year was horrible, I know I could have passed but I could barely get myself out of bed. I apologize to my teachers who worked very hard because I couldn’t bring myself to do anything. [I]t felt unbearable. Worrying about sick family members, loved ones that passed away due to the virus or losing to themselves in their battle with depression. I never wanted to give up more,” freshman Julissa Santana said.  

“I have been experiencing the effects of schoolwork burnout, especially this year. Being an online student has been hard and it’s been hard to stay motivated to do work while also doing an extracurricular activity and worrying about my mental health. I have dealt with burnout in the past years, but never like this. That might be because I’m a senior this year so I have ‘senioritis’, but I feel like it’s more because of the pandemic and having to be online. Mentally, it’s been hard. Sometimes I can’t bring myself to do my homework, but when I don’t do it and my grade suffers, I get mad at myself. Physically, I feel like I’m doing alright. The burnout I experience has caused me to procrastinate doing my homework until the very last minute so I stay up every night doing homework when I could do it during the day, or I don’t finish my work and have to turn it in late. There are some days where I work hard to try and not let the burnout get to me. In order to focus on my work, I put away all distractions, put music on, cancel plans with friends and work for hours to see how much I can get done…I work and also play a sport so I have a rough time managing my homework and end up not doing schoolwork until late. Honestly, keep trying. I know that it can be hard, but the school year is almost over and you’ve made it this far, don’t give up now,” senior Casey Bewley said.

“I think that burnout might be caused by the lack of going to physical school that causes a lack in motivation and that leads to burnout. I think burnout is damaging to mental health. It makes you very unmotivated and makes you feel bad about yourself because you’re not enjoying what you’re doing and you feel as if you’re not being productive. Burnout causes me to procrastinate on a lot of assignments. I definitely do have the motivation to get my work done, which is caused by doing the things that I enjoy like musical theatre and talking to my friends. Finding a balance between work that you need to do and making time for yourself and the things you love will help a lot,” sophomore Ella Kerper said. 

“I think everyone has been struggling with keeping up with loads of homework we get which is pretty stressful. The past year has been tough for me. Just maintaining motivation to get assignments done is now my biggest problem. My mental health has definitely gotten worse over the year. Not being able to socialize and make new friends have put me in the loneliest place I’ve been. The toll it has taken on my physical health has been terrible.  I’ve tried to improve my daily routine while burned out but I don’t see any improvement…The only motivation I get is from being with my friends, but it’s hard to do that when you have piles of homework to do. Though when I get time, hanging out with my friends motivates me to just push through the week…I haven’t really managed my time, my schedule [is] all over the place to balance school and my personal life. Advice I can give to others struggling with [burnout is] to just find something you like doing and just try to get stuff done so you can go back to doing it. I don’t think students that are burned out are going to get better unless they have a better social environment,” freshman Anthony Jones said.

“I certainly feel the effects of schoolwork burnout [for] most of the year to be completely honest. With things the way they’ve been, in addition to already having struggled with this to a degree due to my ADHD, it’s been near impossible to stay on top of everything…I find myself constantly looking for ways to distract myself from all the things I still need to do, which only furthers the cycle.  Despite how I’m making it out to seem, there is work I enjoy doing, it’s just that I lump it under assignments and only find out it wasn’t something I’d have loathed doing when I’m drudging through late work… I’ve dealt with burnout in previous years, though it’s gotten worse with each year of high school….It’s awful, I’ll typically stop checking assignments, essentially remaining ignorant to the exact amount of things I’m blowing off, only aware of either what’s expressly stated during class time and the sense that I’m only digging myself deeper. But despite it all, the pit and the pile continue to grow, until someone, teacher or parent, actually makes me aware just how much I’m missing. I’ve been lucky enough up till now to have that remain true each year, rather than everybody just assume I don’t care, which would be the reasonable assumption. It has created recurring periods of depression, the end of which are marked by the end of each semester, where it’s too late to worry about anything I haven’t yet finished, and I can focus on the present for a change, however brief…But even if I can distract myself from thinking about it, subconsciously I’m still aware of the growing amount of things I haven’t done, and it’s impossible to fully push it out of my mind…[L]ive streams, while still a distraction, to me are a perfect diversion to actually work. ADHD for me is easiest to manage when I’m diverting some of my senses to gibberish, essentially tuning out other distractions I can encounter from them…To other students struggling with the same things, I’d say address the issue as soon as possible, as hypocritical as that sounds. It’s a toxic mindset to remain in that only leads to a declining work ethic and state of mind. If you’re like me in that you say you’ll do something with the honest intent to do it, only to fall short, get someone from outside to push you back on track should you begin to veer. It will feel like you’re being micromanaged,  but you’ll find your situation improving far quicker than had you tried to do things alone. It isn’t enough to have a destination in mind, you have to move if you ever want to get there,” senior Jakob Hanson said. 

“I think I speak for most students when I say that burnout is a serious issue in today’s school youth. Students’ experiences of burnout all relatively come back to the fact that excessive school work is the leading cause of their loss of motivation and stamina…I feel as though no school administrators or officials are taking the acknowledgement of students…asking for more realistic amounts of not only schoolwork but also time to do schoolwork. Just recently I have begun to feel more pressured and stressed from not only school, but also personal life…However, there is no option for me to stop working and getting my grades up to take time to myself to regain energy or the motivation that I lost…Burnout is terrifying to experience, especially when you have important things on the line…There were points when I could not get out of bed because I was so mentally and physically drained…I think that school districts need to take action and understand this issue through the perspective of kids that are barely learning about the real difficulties of life…Talking about this topic is very serious and many will say that people who say they experience burnout are dramatic or sensitive. No one should ever tell anyone that how they feel is invalid especially when it comes to their well being mentally and physically. Anyone can be going through anything, and they could be hanging on by a thread. I know I was and though many didn’t know, the ones that did know didn’t make it better. My time is never organized because of the business I am in which is entertainment. Anything at any time can pop up and cause me to push aside all of my schoolwork…Just because students are kids does not mean that they do not have personal tasks that are far more important because their financial stability depends on it… However, I think that the most important thing to remember is that our future selves are somewhere doing something. No one knows where, when, what or how. But you will be somewhere in the future. I think that this is one thing that really brings me peace is that I will be somewhere in the future. I don’t know where, but I know it definitely won’t be where I am right now. I wish I can talk to every single person who has to experience burnout to understand how each individual feels. Everyone deserves to be heard whether it’s about depression, anxiety, grief, being closeted, being trans, abused, assaulted, hate crimes, slurred and/or many more other worldwide problems that are yet to be demolished. Everyone has to live their life, so live yours without ruining someone else’s,” junior Isiah Lane said.