5 Tips for Avoiding Class Burnout: Plan Frequent Breaks
Summer break is just around the corner! After an unusually stressful year of school, we understand the temptation to run far from your online class screen or catch a few more z’s before logging in for classroom participation, but we’re not quite there yet. It’s important to finish the year out strong and ensure your grades don’t start to slip just before you’re home free. Class burnout is real and after the year we’ve had, chances are you’re feeling the effects. To lend a hand, below are our top five tips for avoiding end-of-year academic burnout and to help see you through to the end.
#1: Take Time Off
Wait, isn’t that what summer is for? It may sound counterintuitive when we’re encouraging you to stay the course through the end of the school year, but running yourself ragged so close to the end is a sure way to burnout. Instead, do your best to plan breaks for yourself to truly recharge – maybe even away from a screen. Going outside, even for just fifteen minutes, has both mood-boosting and cognitive effects. If you pair it with movement, like going for a walk, dancing, or doing a few yoga sunrise salutations in the sunshine, you’ll super-boost those benefits.
#2: Make Fewer Decisions
This year has left many things out of our control and demanded more of our ability to make decisions all at the same time. We are constantly being bombarded with options and choices whose results range from insignificant to paramount. All of that constant decision making takes a toll and could certainly be a culprit contributing to feelings of burnout. One way to mitigate these effects is to purposefully take some decisions out of the equation. Finding simple actions that work for you, like wearing a similar outfit each day or choosing to eat the same thing for breakfast each morning, can start to relieve some of the minor demands of decision making and make room for the more important ones.
#3: Get Plenty of Good Sleep
Speaking of making decisions, maybe you decide to make sleep more of a priority by choosing a bedtime and sticking to it. Sleep is one of the most effective medicines for healing the symptoms of burnout. You may have heard before that pulling an all-nighter to study for your final is likely to cause more harm than good, and that applies to burnout too. Sacrificing sleep for productivity is more likely to leave you crawling to the finish line than effortlessly jogging through it. Find the routine that works for you and get the rest you need to do your best work during waking hours.
#4: Meditate
You’ve seen the claims by now. Meditation is the cure for all that ails you! While you may not be reaching nirvana every time you mindfully inhale and exhale, meditation can still be incredibly effective to help refresh and recharge when you need it most. Even if your mind wanders (ours all do!) or you don’t feel like you’re “doing it right”, taking a few five-minute breaks throughout the day to focus on your breath and check in with yourself is a good first step to keep class burnout at bay.
#5: Keep Things in Perspective
You’re almost there. It feels big now. These next few weeks come with a laundry list of assignments and exams that feel overwhelming and near impossible to complete with the level of energy you still possess; but in reality, it’ll all be over a month from now. Take the time to take care of yourself, and remember that it’s just one small step in your awesome marathon of life. If you find it helpful, take the time to set some goals or exciting plans for the upcoming summer. There are good things on the horizon and your strategies to overcome end-of-semester class burnout are sure to turn this last sprint into a stroll.
To learn more about what makes an education at the Rose Academies charter schools so different from your typical high school experience, we invite you to explore our website at www.go2rose.com or send us a message.