Do I have Burnout?

Burnout, stress, depression, overwhelmed, any number of things could be going on.

Talk to your professors and an advisor, see what resources they have for you.

But also understand this says NOTHING bad about you, and in fact recognizing you are struggling and need help is a good sign.

Hey man. I failed two classes and today I'm a software engineer earning 6 figures. Don't sweat it. If you fail a class you can always retake it. It's not the end of the world.

Just do your best and take care of yourself. The most important part is eating well, drinking enough water and getting enough sleep. Sleep is very important.

I think about burnout simply: if resting no longer leads to recovery, then you're burned out.

Peace. Good luck.

This is a very common sentiment that I see in my students (I am a teaching assistant in a university sometimes). I obviously can't diagnose you, but I do recommend speaking to a counselor or a therapist. What you're describing sounds like either burnout or depression, and without more information, I can't really guess as to which one it is.

As for practical academic advice, I have several guesses as to what's going on. My first guess is that you have testing anxiety. It could be worth doing an online search about how to manage testing anxiety and speaking to a counselor if that's the case.

The second guess, which is more cynical but unfortunately significantly more common in students, is that you might be experiencing the big-fish effect. As for the big-fish effect, college is different from high school. There's more people per class, and more people in general. And college tends to have a weeding effect, where people who are less academically inclined tend not to attend college. So whereas previously you found yourself to be academically gifted among your peers, now you find yourself just as gifted as everyone else around you. Big fish in a small pond, essentially.

I can't say for sure if that is the case for you, but it's important in general to remember that college and onward are significantly different from high school and before. This culture shift is the one thing that really trips up a lot of students. In high school, teachers' jobs were to funnel students to the next grade, even if students didn't quite understand the material. College is really the first step where students start to be weeded out. What that means is, even getting through college means you are academically gifted. But it also means that you cannot use the habits that you've used in high school and just expect it to work in college. All instructors in college and onward approach class with the mindset of "you're responsible for your own success." Essentially, you should learn to be extremely proactive in your learning experience. You might have noticed that class takes up much less time than in high school. That's not because professors wants you to have more free time. It's because professors expect you to use that time to stay on top of all the lecture material on your own. Go to office hours. Ask questions. Read the textbook, take notes, study your notes. And if you aren't already doing this: ATTEND ALL THE LECTURES. NO EXCEPTIONS.

If you are having trouble with the material or if you notice that you're doing worse than you expected, then college expects that you need to take the reins and reach out for help yourself. Professors are excellent for answering anything you're confused about - go to their office hours or send them an email. TA's are also a remarkably good resource, but for slightly different reasons: they've taken the exact same class only a handful of years ago, and they know exactly the little tips and tricks that'll help you succeed in class. And they know what's the important information that you need to know and what's unimportant extra information. And they also know what the professor is like, so they may warn you of trick questions or misleading wordings.

As for what you can do right now regarding your grades this semester? Like I said - be proactive. Reach out to the professors of those classes. Ask for clarifications on any questions you have, ask for corrections on any questions you missed on exams. Ask for extra credit. Go through the end-of-chapter questions and do them all, and show it to the professor. Show that you're willing to do extra work, and then actually follow through with doing that extra work. There's an open secret in college, which is that professors can do whatever they want. Convince them that you care, convince them that you deserve extra credit, and they will give you extra credit.

Apologies for the pithy remark; but if you have to ask yourself if it's burnout, then it's probably burnout.

That is not to say that it can't also be other things too, in my experience burnout is usually accompanied by depression and an excess of work stress.

Edited to add: I Guess I didn't really address the point specifically about not studying and struggling with the tests. That was me the entirety of my education, from the first grades I can remember all the way through my 8.5 years of college with 2 degrees. I just didn't care, especially when the homework itself wasn't graded. I'm not sure how to help on that point specifically, other than to say that you're not alone, and I made it with similar issues.

It's really difficult to stay motivated for as long as we're in education. Do you know where your current standing is specifically in those two courses? Could you go to those two professors and voice what you're facing and see if there's any recommendations they can provide you?

It's ok to fail. We don't want that to be our normal state but it's ok. It's ok to be tired and struggling with motivation. A big part of learning is learning how to adapt to new situations and not just learning a particular topic. College is about both and then some.

What year are you in? Some of those early courses are meant to get you to the next step, and some (it's been a while for me, maybe it isn't this way anymore) seemed like they were intentionally designed to get people to quit. Weed out courses, so to say.

One of those weed out courses I went through was a huge attendance first level physics course that it seemed like nobody was doing well. About 1/4 dropped it over time to avoid the failing grade.

In the end, the professor did a flat full 2 grade "curve" for everyone that stuck it out. I don't think his intent was to teach, I think it was to break those who would be willing to drop. I don't like the concept of those courses, and I don't even know if they exist anymore, but that's also something to consider if the ones you're failing in have that kind of feeling to them.

Keep trying, you're not a failure just because you've failed at something, and sometimes this is part of life. You've got this.

Gotta vent...

There's a reason college students party.

If you're stressing it's going to make you perform worse and then stress more. Very easy to fall into a feedback loop.

So even though it sounds counterproductive, you need to take some time away from it and recharge.

I was in a similar situation as you. I pulled through and let me tell you: It did not get better :(

I managed to get good grades and such because I knew most of the core concepts already and had some luck in the intelligence lottery w.r.t the specific kinds of intelligence beneficial in my field which enabled me to learn the new parts really quite easily but if that's not the case for you, YMMV.

If I was doing it again, I'd stop if possible (a degree was not strictly required in my situation but beneficial). Failing that, I'd find a way to make it not as stressful (i.e. fewer classes).

If you can get away with dropping a couple of classes and still have enough credits then try to do that to lessen your workload. You can also potentially reduce it further if you request accommodations.

Hey op, you should see if your uni has a counseling center or if you're in a country with proper healthcare you should see about getting therapy the regular way

When I was in college, they had mental health services offered for free to students. I talked to a therapist once when I had an anxiety attack in college and it helped immensely.

Your description doesn't sound like burnout, but it does sound like all of the risk factors for burnout, so take care not to push yourself too hard.

You say you've always loved to learn, but really it sounds like you're more of a completionist. You're more interested in succeeding in the academic rituals (taking tests and getting good grades) than learning itself. Aka, you're extrinsically motivated, not intrinsically. Extrinsic motivation always leads to burn out eventually.

Perhaps reevaluate whether you're going to college just to get some degree that will make you employable (as we do in the US), or if you're actually interested in learning about a specialized field. If the latter is true, reevaluate your major and maybe see if you can switch to something that interests you enough to motivate you intrinsically.

Your description doesn't sound like burnout, but it does sound like all of the risk factors for burnout, so take care not to push yourself too hard.

I find in today's society it's easy to lose any reason for doing anything other than "I was told I have to" about halfway through college it really did feel like a scam, like I was getting screwed over and forced to do it anyway. I still believe it's partially true, but I used the skills I learned in college to help push my personal life goals along.

Ask yourself, will you be happy doing what you're going to school for? Is the goal you're going towards what you actually want to do? Will it help you do what you actually want to do? If you find good reasons for those, the next time you ask yourself "why am I doing any of this?" You'll have an answer. If not, well, maybe it's time to change your concentration, or seek out paths other than college.

Just remember that you also do need to think about affording to live (unfortunately) in all of this.

Not burnout in the adult, working sense no I don't think so. That would be quite worrying and likely not actually caused by school / college.

School tired, absolutely. Generally speaking, in the adult world motivation is a nice to have, the need to have is discipline. Discipline does not care in the slightest if you want to do something or if you're motivated to do it. Discipline is doing it no matter what because that is what you've decided that you will do.

The source of discipline is your parents, objectively they failed. Not out of malice mind you, just from not knowing that this was something they had to do. Since you did your schoolwork, a typical source of contention where a parent needs to instill discipline in their child, they didn't identify that they needed to find some other way to teach you. Be it housework, training/exercise or hell even taking care of one self if you're the "workaholic" type that needs to use discipline to force themselves to have fun and relax.

Now of course that train has sailed. So you need to teach yourself. Which is not easy but you'll succeed. I find it helpful to think of discipline as something you get more of the more you use it. So start small, decide on something small that you should/need to do but struggle with. Maybe it's brushing your teeth EVERY night or getting out of bed when the alarm rings or running laundry every weekend. Something, and then doing that until it's either completely automated or you've got enough control over it that you know you'll always be able to quickly force yourself to do it. Then move on to bigger fish. Perhaps it's spending one hour (a specific hour helps, like 6-7 pm) doing schoolwork. Doesn't even matter if you don't even have schoolwork to do, just read course material again or look into an upcoming course. It needs to be mandatory, something you don't allow yourself to ever cheat on.

Further never ever reward yourself with NOT doing a task like studying/training etc. Instead reward yourself with other things. A piece of candy at the most basic, an hour of watching TV/playing games or whatever other activities you want to do, that you don't need discipline to do.

I hope this is helpful. Take care of yourself, you got this!