It’s that time of year again. The leaves change color, instructors pile on the work and your hair turns gray from the madness of the last month of school.
That’s right — it’s burnout, and no student is safe.
Just like a bad slasher movie, the sequel to this horror is worse than the original. Burnout often rears its ugly head by midterm, making the student who was so carefree and relaxed in August look like Cosmo Kramer after 10 cups of coffee come December.
The most common side effects are poor test performances, quick tempers and horrible cases of memory loss. It’s the top reason students change majors, miss class and abuse alarm clocks that buzz at 5:30 a.m.
If you’ve never encountered the terror of burnout, just you wait. Cram sessions make you delirious with sleep deprivation. You’ve got more projects than total semester hours, all of your tests have been scheduled strategically for the same day and you realize it’s only Monday.
Some students dodge the worst of it by using those convenient football open dates to study, but others get sucked into the vast black hole of academic frenzy. Many are never heard from again.
Since November is the month that gets the best of students, I’ve come up with some slightly foolproof ways to avoid being scalded on exam day.
Pray for school cancellation. Hurricane season may be over, but Baton Rouge is close enough to the Gulf coast for El Nino to conjure up an out-of the-blue storm if the right conditions occur.
Do like some of my friends did before Hurricane Lili and have an authentic “hurricane dance” in your apartment. This can be done any way you want, but it’s recommended you dance in circles and speak in unknown tongues. This move also doubles as a party ice-breaker.
Spend some time at the library. You know, it’s that big place with those square things that have paper inside them. This place is great for trying to learn an entire semester of geology in two days or typing that 20 page report you’ve had months to write. Besides, if you get bored you can head up to the top floor and check out the wild action that reportedly goes on after hours.
Cut back on the parties. I know, this one’s tough, but speaking in incoherent, drunk slurs does not count as a foreign language and you won’t get out of class credit, either. Those hangovers don’t help you make it to those 7:30 a.m. lectures either.
Drop a class if you can. They sky will not fall if you don’t have 19 hours, work three jobs and make a 4.0 this semester. Perfection is overrated and C stands for “career.”
If you’re really desperate to get some extra study time, think of creative ways to freak your professor out. Run into your 350-person American history class screaming “The British are coming! The British are coming !” (Caution: You might get time off for this stunt to seek mental health treatment, but it just could as easily backfire, so beware.
After more than three years of college, I’ve discovered burnout is more complicated than I ever imagined. The only way to truly avoid it is to know it exists and respect that it can swallow you the moment you let your guard down.