Looking back, I didn’t appreciate school vacations nearly as much as I should have as a child.   Honestly, I didn’t appreciate the simplicities of elementary school as a child.  My afternoons after school consisted of playing with my Barbie dolls and going to bed close to 8 pm every night. I didn’t understand why my older sister was so stressed. She stayed up for hours, attempting to swim in the sea of papers that covered her twin bed. While I slept, she was in the next room over; country music blasting in her headphones as her graphing calculator would spew the right answers to her AP Calc questions.  I was blissfully unaware of the stresses my sister was under as I was living a life marked by extra recess and the rumblings of “who liked who”. Now as a junior in high school, I understand the stress she felt as my nights have become defined by the hours of homework ahead of me. 

    I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve stayed up till 12:30 in the morning, physically having to jolt myself awake. Whether it’s completing 10 pages of APUSH notes, trying to get the last questions of a Delta Math correct, or finishing whatever classwork I didn’t finish, the brightness of my Chromebook is truly helping me stay awake. When I’m doing work this late, my brain is so fried from the pressures of the school day as well as the hours I have spent working on the same assignments. The cycle has repeated most nights, going to bed after midnight and waking up with eye bags taking up half my face.  Going to bed after midnight for weeks at a time can take a whole toll on your body, especially when you spend a decent amount of mornings waking up between 5-5:30, attempting to cram whatever you didn’t finish before the sun rises.  A constant loop of horrible time management combined with the pressures of high school, feeling burned out was truly inevitable.

I’m not the only one feeling burned out by the pressures of high school. Throughout the hallways of Winthrop High School, there is a noticeable energy decrease. The general feeling is survival, the need to just make it through the day.  Think back to the students you have encountered recently; physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve been told by those around me that “they can’t wait to get out of the school”. According to Web MD, “Burnout is a form of exhaustion caused by constantly feeling swamped. It happens when we experience too much emotional, physical, and mental fatigue for too long.” Reflecting on the atmosphere of Winthrop High School recently, I can confidently say that the majority of students are experiencing severe burnout.  We are all collectively stressed, sleep-deprived, and counting the milliseconds until the clock strikes two. 

If I’m being honest, I started writing this article the week after February Break. I’m fully aware that February  Break was over a month ago, yet there’s a reason this story is only going out now. I have been so unmotivated lately that assignments that should have taken mere minutes are now taking me hours.  Writing usually serves as my way to keep my creativity flowing. However, even the thought of writing has just made me feel stressed, not relaxed. I’ve been lacking that creative spark that fuels me as I am simply just trying to survive junior year while trying to get my sleep schedule back on track. However, I’ve decided that the best way to fight that lack of motivation is to force myself into the very things I am unmotivated to do.  This means being as productive as possible when I can and reminding myself that it isn’t summer vacation yet. 

 Junior year isn’t for the faint of heart as there is the constant reminder that these will be the grades that will get you into college. The second half of the school year is generally when students lose interest and motivation. The weather is dreary, the work is harder and even the thought of completing any assignment is bothersome. As the days grow warmer and the weather begins to change, hopefully, the energy in the school will change with it. We are all counting the days until summer vacation, but we still have 3 months left. We can’t stop putting effort in just because we’re tired or because we simply “don’t want to do it”.  We need to start being gentle with ourselves as that is the only way we can truly combat our feelings of burnout.  Just because the workload has intensified does not mean it’s our time to give up on school.  So as a PSA, I have found a list of some tips to combat burnout. I hope we can all learn a thing or two from these tips and in the process maybe we will start to feel like ourselves again(not the overly stressed and barely functioning versions of ourselves that have been existing lately).