If Academic Burnout is making you question everything, you're in good company. Northwestern economics professor Piotr Duvartchek experienced the same thing in graduate school, especially during his fourth year. You're not limited in classes, as like every day kind of looks the same, you go to the office, you think about your problem and you're just stuck. I'm not sure why you've been doing this because there was nothing coming out of your research at that early stage.
It was the toughest over holiday vacation. The first day of the holiday you kind of feel great, because like it's holiday. And then like the third day, you suddenly like start feeling a bit depressed. The moment you have those extra days to kind of take a picture of perspective and think about your life, then you kind of realize, this is what I'm doing, doesn't even make any sense.
It's just useful for other people. And I'm not just wasting more time. Ideally Northwestern, I'm Anita Lee. In this episode of Inudie Classified, we're looking at how Northwestern professors have experienced burnout.
Like many Northwestern students, Northwestern Religious Studies and African-American Studies professor KB Dennis Mead also struggled with academic pressure and extracurricular commitments during her senior year at Bowdoin College. I was very much involved in campus life through my work with the African-American student group and other affinity groups on campus. It was Black History Month and I was in charge of planning a whole lot of things. Plus trying to just manage like, graduating, looking for a job.
And my burnout looked like just literally 24 hours of me being unable to just move. And it was a very terrifying time because I really didn't know what was going on, but my body told me what was going on. I needed to sit down, I needed to be still. I think that experience is a defining moment for what I never want to go back to.
I never want to feel like that again. Similar to Dennis Mead, Asian-American Studies professor Ray San Diego said their experiences would burnout and encourage them to set boundaries and value their mental well-being, especially when completing their PhD in 2018. I finished September, October. And then within a six-week period, three people around me had died.
And then my partner was sick and there was all these other things, but you're expected to keep going. It seems like at this point, two paths. You shove that all down and so you're going to deal with it later and get back to being quote unquote productive. Or I say, I need to stop.
Otherwise, I'm going to die by the time I'm 45. And so that's kind of what I did. I was like, no, I'm not going to do this anymore. But what is burnout?
According to the American Psychological Association, burnout is when extreme and prolonged physical or mental exertion or an overburdening workload takes its toll. Sam Conway is the Assistant Director of Mental Health Promotion at Northwestern's Health Promotion and Wellness Department. She agrees that burnout happens when we go beyond our limits. Burnout in a less obvious way and show up a lot in a university setting where folks might feel like they can keep going and they're like kind of okay.
But you're just not really you. You're not able to be genuine. You're not able to give things. You're all.
You're not able to live your values. Dennis Mead added that experiences with burnout can vary depending on an individual's identity, including obstacles like racial aggression, microaggressions, sexism, and homophobia. She has experienced this herself. I'm a black woman in the academy.
I'm the only black woman in my department. And I have a very supportive environment here. But statistically, it's been shown that the path to tenure for black women tends to be more rocky than for others. Kind of work that I do, you know, the pressure of feeling that the academy doesn't always take our inquiries and our topics with the same weight that they would quote-unquote, more traditional humanities disciplines.
Dennis Mead also recommended finding methods of relaxation and building in time to be around community. Burnout happens when people feel isolated. They have to do everything by themselves all at once. Schedule time for activities that replenish you.
Set firm boundaries around how often you engage with folks who might be taking more than they give. Learning not to catastrophize as well, if something doesn't get done in the timeframe that I wanted it to get done. Cultivate a practice of mindfulness. And I know that sounds really heavy.
Put your headphones in, download meditation music on your playlist, and you sit for two or three minutes and you breathe. The burnout, it'll ultimately get in the way of you accomplishing your goals. Give yourself that time to restore. It's really, really important.
San Diego said that sometimes dealing with burnout requires taking unnecessary responsibilities out of your life. If it doesn't spark joy, then why are you doing it? Your resume is not going to be on your tombstone. Understanding that rest and sleep and joy and fun are just as important as the opposites.
As for Jorchek, he found having kids help reduce his burnout. I love recommending students to immediately go in and help kids. But when you get kids, you just worry much more about them compared to your job, and I think this is very healthy. Just having something else in your life that's equally important and more important than your job or your studies, just as a counterbalance.
You don't get burnt out with your kids? You don't, but then you go to work. You have to balance it out, that's the whole point. You should not condition your happiness in life on just one single thing, because you are going to get bored or tired at some point.
When you have a couple of things in your life that you care about, then one thing frustrates you is to focus more on the other part. So if you don't see raising children in your future, don't worry, not all is lost. From the Daily Northwestern, I'm Anita Lee. Thanks for listening to this episode of NUD Classified.
This episode was reported and produced by me. The audio editor of the Daily Northwestern is Lauren's Price. The digital managing editor is Anjali Matal, and the editor in chief is Jacob Fulton. Make sure to subscribe to the Daily Northwestern's podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or SoundCloud to hear more episodes like this.