Staring at the bright glow of a phone or desktop screen, I’m purposefully blocking out all the work piling up in the binders kept for all my classes. This has been the consistent day to day experience of my life. While it may be a form of projection, I don’t believe I’m a rare case.
I could hardly say that I have the hardest or busiest schedule. It’d be a lie if I said so. There are people with far harder classes and harsher teachers. But, despite knowing that, I can’t bring myself to do the work constantly weighing my backpack down, only barely getting to that work when my care for my grade outweighs my dread for my work.
It would be impossible for me to tell you this behavior isn’t my own fault: the consequences of my own laziness and sleep deprivation. Those are facts I cannot deny. But I don’t think those are the only reasons behind the consistent issue of student burnout, as I know I’m not the only one having this problem.
For those with high expectations for themselves, the grading system feels more like they’re constantly floating in an ocean of assignments. As someone works, they’re holding their breath to stay afloat on top of this ocean. This exercise works, until it doesn’t. Maybe they breathe a little too slowly. Maybe they zoned out a little too long from the monotonous task of breathing, day after day, in the same rhythm.
But the result is the same—they sink—and once they sink, it becomes impossible to come back up. Once they’re under the surface of the water, they can’t breathe in again. So, they just sink and sink.
Then the water pressure increases as they fall into the depths. Light slowly stops reaching into the depths. This pressure might be alleviated every weekend, when the ocean recedes. But with the water already invading the person’s lungs, they won’t stop drowning just because the ocean is gone for a moment.
This analogy is simply how student life feels for some with expectations too high. Whether those expectations are personal or familial ones, they can become a never ending challenge of trying not to sink underneath the surface. It sometimes seems as if someone doesn’t want to dedicate every ounce of their energy toward school, it begins to punish them for it. The ocean will just slowly wash over them instead.
Educators will say failure is simply growth, and that a student shouldn’t be discouraged by failing an assignment or test. But when someone’s grades determine one’s future, and a single bad test is enough to trap a grade for an entire semester; it’s impossible to say that failing is just a learning experience.
I won’t be the kind of student who blames this sort of thing on teachers, though. While teachers may be at fault in some cases, they are hardly the only reason. I’d be even less inclined to say the main one.
Like many issues, student burnout isn’t something that one party can be accused of causing. Students, burnt out or not, have a choice. A choice that often creates self defining spirals. Teachers can be harsh graders, or not explain a subject in a way a student can understand, but it’s also the system grades exist in that makes every potential failure almost impossible to recover from without some consequence.
The system doesn’t account for those who are forced to take extended time off. It’s near impossible to catch up when you take more than a day off, when even missing one day can be hard enough. The system can also be a struggle for those who don’t have the time outside of school or the energy to spend multiple hours on school work after spending what remains of their energy during school hours. Much like those who simply forget to hold their breath in order to float, these students have no way to float back to the surface after they sink.
It seems that unless one is always motivated but never upset, tired—or human—it becomes impossible to keep up once they fall behind, at least with the current system of grading and workload. The floating on top of this ocean is simply unattainable for everyone, while it may work for some motivated few, it’s more likely to discourage and drown those who fall behind and sink into the ocean.
