I’m tired boss. I’ve had a really rough semester and I can’t look at my calculus without my eyes glazing over. Now that it’s time for the final I’m looking back at all the concepts I had “breakthrough” moments with… And I got nothing. Can’t remember a lick. I don’t have any gusto in me still, I’m already planning to retake the course but fuck me ive never experienced burnout like this.
Is this normal?
When I was a student, I tried to take rest days before exams if possible. During my bachelor I had a strict rule of never studying more than 6 days a week, 10 hours a day (including commute). Having some time off was fundamental. I dropped that rule during the master and barely graduated :/
Now as a teacher, I often see students not able to pace themselves, giving it their all and collapsing half way through exam season. Understanding your own limits is rough… in particular when it had worked for so many months. But they overlooked how each month took a toll and at some point you can’t keep it all together.
If you see your burnout lasting more than a couple of days of rest, reach out. The sooner the better.
I also feel like a lot of students don’t know how to set goals for studying. For instance studying for math may be solving x problems in y time, which roughly mimics test time. If you can’t do that, time to reach out for help rather than spinning wheels.
Mini-rant incoming
There is that, sure, but also courses are structured to make sense as a whole, such that the end connects to all the pieces you have been gathering along the way. Therefore, it is often easier and mire fulfilling to study at the end of the semester, when the end goal of the techniques studied is shown. On the other hand, postponing all to the end is obviously a bad plan. So to avoid that, courses are structured with mid-terms and homework hand ins and so on to force students into learning a bit at a time, thus often loosing track of the global picture and making studying feel harder and less motivating. Plus, constant testing is a source of increased stress and lower productivity (who would have guessed).
I don’t know the solution to this conundrum, I just rant about it.
I’ve taken junior level college classes that relied on concepts taught from freshman year without any class in-between reinforcing that knowledge. Hell, I’ve had college courses continue concepts that were last taught to me in middle school.
I feel like part of the problem is that students demand full understanding as to why they need to know a specific something immediately while having little context as to why this may be important. There are also cases where it may be important to some students in the class, but the school doesn’t know which students yet because those students aren’t there.