Burnout

In his essay, "Video Games: The Addiction," author Tom Bissell said that for many years of his life, his overworked thalamus went on a rumspringa, impairing him from inspired and absorbed writing. In other words, he was burned out. Writing this now, I feel rather uninspired. The city is gray and cold; the sidewalks are wet from the rain. The cuffs of my jeans drag through the slush as I carry my bitter deli coffee to class. Whenever I feel burnout, I think, "it could be worse." When I traveled to Japan, I would walk through the streets at 8:00 pm and pass high school students still hard at work in after-school programs. My dad explained that the typical Japanese student's life was sports practice from 4:00 am till the start of school. After school, more sports, extra academic courses, and finally home by 10:00 pm. Their life was an unrelenting cycle of Kumon. In contrast, my American "burnout" is pitiful.  

On the F train yesterday, I sat next to a young girl, no older than ten, and her father, who held her scooter. The girl was sobbing, visibly overwhelmed by her math homework. She was plotting points on a coordinate plane, and her frustration grew exponentially with each X and Y value. Nevertheless, her father stood firm, insisting that she finish the homework. Instinctively I asked, "can I help?" empathizing with the child's struggle. He replied, "no, she's fine." His blunt response took me back, and I remembered all the times I wept over homework. Finally, the girl and her father got off at the same stop as me, and we both entered the dark, cold night. 

I was on the train in the first place because I was heading back home from a college interview. They herded the interviewees into a holding pen, where we awaited our interview. It reminded me of my twelve-hour audition for Laguardia high school—a grueling, prolonged, and anxious wait. I talked to a few students in the room, and their resumes were intimidating: 4.0 GPA unweighted, 1530 SAT, ten APs, three after-school programs, leader of two clubs, science olympiad, captain of the soccer team, and a nonprofit founder. Listening to them, I felt like I was in a room with children playing as adults. The sea of crisp white button-downs and blazers added to this sentiment; I was also wearing a blazer. One of the students I met followed me on Instagram the following day. His bio was a resume: Name of high school '23, Cornell summer program '22, Columbia program '23, Questbridge prep '22, Questbridge Finalist '23. 

Perhaps my burnout is less attributed to the hard work itself but more to presenting myself in an adult way. I have been roleplaying as an adult, subsuming this version of myself that has the foresight and intellect of someone many years my senior. But I wonder, in contrast to Japan, does America truly value hard work? Or do we reward the people who can best fake it? I think of the articles calling AI word-generating software "the end of term papers." One Ivy League student told me that she used the software for a class. My immediate response was: is that not counterintuitive to why you are at university in the first place? But then again, if everyone is cutting corners, is it foolish not to? She argued that sometimes you're in a crunch for time, and you do what you have to do. 

A student in one of my classes said to me, "English just isn't my thing." We are not asked to read a book a week in English, so from my perspective, this was equivalent to saying, "thinking just isn't my thing." Yet, the student excelled in school and was successful in the college process. We fostered a culture where students are better equipped to complete math drills, and textbook notes are of higher stock. But in the process, we have diluted childhood characteristics imperative to development, such as curiosity, creativity, and, most importantly, fun. It is not lost on me that education is a privilege, and I have been extremely fortunate to have one. But are we teaching kids to think creatively and critically or to turn in assignments diligently? Am I destined to overwork myself to the point of burnout? Much like Tom Bissell's overworked thalamus on rumspringa, overworked students are in desperate need of a rumspringa. Before we subscribe to grind culture, perhaps we should know an alternative—allow ourselves to diverge from the path set for us and open our eyes to a new beginning.