Baffled by Burnout

It's inevitable as a student to have burnout from time to time. After talking with some of my classmates they usually experience burnout around midterms or at the end of a semester. It seems that most students don't seem to experience burnout too often nor is it something say, a day at the beach, a long run, or a stiff drink can't handle. Am I the only one out there that gets plagued with burnout every semester that just won't go away? When I started on the magical odyssey that is nursing school three years ago I did not experience burnout. I studied so much for my anatomy class and was so sleep deprived I found myself out driving around at 5 AM listening to recorded lectures, watching the sun rise, and going over anatomy index cards (man was I a loser).

With every arduous academic challenge a professor threw my way I was like the old Animal House adage, "thank you Sir, may I have another." Then suddenly the old signs of burnout that I experienced from a previous career started creeping in. I began to get migraines more frequently, I was driving more aggressively, I couldn't handle my cell phone ringing anymore with yet one more thing I needed to deal with, and the most disturbing sign was my motivation was draining faster than shit down a sinkhole. As much as I love nursing, and believe me I LOVE nursing, I'd sit for hours on end with my textbooks open but surfed the web instead because I just couldn't bring myself to study Organic Chemistry for one more stinking hour.

I have this professor that I really like this semester who actually admitted that students experience burnout. (I've had many professors who refuse to acknowledge that they've ever experienced academic burnout, or fail to see why students would ever suffer from such a phenomenon. I'm starting to really think that when they bestow you with a PhD they also put a microchip in your brain that makes you forget all of your own experiences as a student or have selective memory as to what their experience was as a student, but I digress).

I was so thankful that a professor was keen to the fact that students grapple with burnout that when she mentioned it my ears perked up just waiting to hear the pearls of wisdom she was going to offer me so I never had to experience this treacherous academic malady again. She offered, "Now for those of you who are going to do academic work throughout your spring break remember the importance of taking an hour or two off for yourself." An hour or two? Are you kidding me? An hour or two off after a half a semester and doing a full week of continuous studying would do me as much good as a swift kick in the ass.

Who are these super humans that can fully recover from the stress and pressure of a whole week of work and the whole semester of school in an hour of two? Like watching Stephen Colbert make Eliot Spitzer cracks for an hour or two is going to erase the countless hours of lost sleep, intracranial vessel damage from the multitudes of migraine episodes, and the non stop right eye-twitching that is very disconcerting. I've tried every remedy for burnout I can think of and sadly enough I've done them so many times that I'm getting burnout from my burnout. I've gone on long runs (there's nothing like being exhausted and then forcing yourself to go on a run, you feel better afterwards but man does the run suck), soothed myself with Carmel Frappacinos, I've gone to wiser authorities to look for sage advice and no, neither watching Oprah nor reading Deepak Chopra, did any good. I've tried meditation, surfing more frequently, taking naps, staying in and doing nothing, going out and having some drinks (I thought maybe my problem was that I didn't have a life, and then when I got one, I realized I did not have a life for a reason, oh yeah school).

Basically nothing has worked as more than a quick fix. I know I need to take this summer off but there is so much I want to do. Should I finish my pre-med requirements in case I decide somewhere along the line I want to go to med school? (what am I nuts?) I really want to travel and was contemplating doing nursing exchange programs in Africa, Nepal, or Cambodia but I don't have the money for these programs (funny how the universities want to charge you $5000+ to work in 3rd world countries, all in the name of "academic credit" of course). I know one of the answers to this burnout thing lies in me taking some time off this summer but I just feel like that's such a waste. I've always admired those that can cram as much stuff into a summer than I can fit into a lifetime. We all know those types of people, people that can knit their grandmother a quilt, film a documentary on the effects of schistosimiasis on corn maize farmers in Venezuela, de-worm infants in Tanzania, write a dissertation on post-Stalin neoeconomic theory of the Soviet Union, while procuring government grants for their new ecofriendly non-profit all within the space of a summer. Seriously, how do these people do it? And how can I become one of them?

I know what's really important is having a way to create balance in my life and being OK with the fact that sometimes I'm going to be off balance and need to find my way back. I just hope that I find a new formula for myself that works and that I get back to being the masochistic student that loves pulling all-nighters.