30 Mar 2021

Getting stressed while at uni is a normal phenomenon. It’s so normal that we might even fail to realise that our stress is manifesting into complete and total burn out.

To put it bluntly, burning out is to become completely exhausted through overworking yourself. It happens when you’re overwhelmed and unable to meet constant demands and deadlines.

As the stress continues to build, you begin to lose the interest that led you to start your uni degree and the motivation to complete it. It's bad when you hit this point, because it's bloody hard to pull yourself out of a rut and get back on track with everything so, here are five ways to avoid burning out in the first place.

 

1. Recognise, reverse and be resilient

Watch for and recognise the warning signs of burn out–exhaustion, frustration and lack of motivation.

Once you’ve recognised that you may be burning out, acknowledge the damage and reverse it by managing stress. Disconnect and let yourself be–listen to music, watch a movie or go on a coffee date with a mate.

Every time you recognise, reverse and take care of your physical and emotional health, you’re building your resilience to stress. It won’t be a walk in the park, but after a while you’ll have an easier way to deal with uni stress and avoid the infamous first year burn out.

2. Schedule in some rest days

Everyone needs some downtime. Scheduling in a rest day or two will break up your busy schedule and give you time to work on yourself rather than an assessment that you’ll forget about as soon as you submit it.

When it comes to these rest days, you should focus on what you want to do–whether it’s reading that book you’ve been holding off on, grabbing a towel and heading down to the beach or spending all day napping and catching up on some quality sleep.

3. Start saying ‘yes’ to more things

Say yes to hanging out with mates–it’ll give you a much-needed break and a chance to remember that there's more going on in the world than your assignment. Say yes to some extra shifts–earn some cash instead of being chained to a desk trying to deal with an unnecessary amount of readings and have a laugh with your work mates. Say yes to dinner with your family, heading to the gym with your friends or buying a ticket to a festival with a line up you've been frothing over. 

It might seem like doing this is going to stress you out even more, but uni life isn't all about studying. You need to give yourself some slack and enjoy being a student–eventually, you'll get a more regular job and you'll wish you had the same freedom of your uni days. Enjoy it while it lasts.

4. Change your location

You’ll find yourself spending hours at your laptop, staring at the same screen, wall, and desk. Each time you sit down to do work at the same desk, time will feel like it’s not moving.

You’ll be stuck in a rut, doing the same routine just like you were in high school. While it might be productive at first, eventually your brain will stop working and you'll feel like you're trapped.

Commit to a change of scenery. Go to a cafe, a different library or just sit in the sun for a bit. Breaking up the routine a lil will save you in the long run.

5. Break down your work into bite-sized pieces

Taking a task head-on in one massive lump is exhausting (and terrifying).

Every week (or every day if ya can manage it) you should sit down for a couple of minutes and just break down your readings, upcoming assessments and study time into set chunks with their own mini-deadlines. This provides a healthy, manageable way of completing uni work. 

Sometimes we burn out because it seems like every bit of uni work is urgent and we've got a million assignments that feel like they all need to be finished right away. But if you pace it out a bit, you'll realise you can chip away at everything rather than smashing out everything the night before.