Beginning
Rebecca Wang, 2T3 MAM
In my third year of undergrad, I joined the leadership team of a budding campus club that I had joined and grew passionate about during my second year. During the summer before third year leading up to orientation week, we were supposed to plan out our own orientation events to aid us in reaching students who would be interested in our club. Given that this was the first time that most of our leadership team—including me—was doing this, it ended up becoming a last-minute scramble to put together a few events for the clubs fair. It was frustrating to coordinate at the last minute, especially since my attempts to initiate planning earlier in the summer had been met with silence. It made me feel as if the other students on our team were slacking off and not doing their part.
With our few events, we were fortunately able to get the contact information of many students who were interested in joining. Unfortunately, however, this meant that there was a big list of students to contact, and only a few of us to complete the task. This, combined with heavy schoolwork and demanding administrative club tasks, meant that I was swiftly becoming overwhelmed. It felt like a never-ending to-do list that grew longer with every half-item I finished.
When I complained to my mom about everything, she gently pointed out that she thought that I was burnt out. This idea had never crossed my mind previously, so it was shocking to hear, but completely accurate. There had been many signals, both physical and emotional, that hinted at my state. I was physically exhausted. I was not enjoying anything that I was doing, whether that was courses with material that I normally love or leading this club that I was originally so excited about or even spending time with my family and friends—because I was worried about all the things that needed to be done. I was upset with my team members because I felt like they were not pulling their weight. I had completely missed and ignored these signs telling me that I needed to slow down and rest.
This was my first experience of burnout. My mom patiently explained to me the dangers of not taking care of myself and the importance of burnout awareness, including recognizing the signs of approaching burnout and taking active steps to prevent burnout. She taught me to HALT as a way to check-in on how I’m doing – ask myself if I am Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired. Since then, I have started trying to ask myself these questions on a regular basis to screen for potential indicators of burnout. Since then, my experience can be summarized in a table similar to those used in clinical settings, such as the CRB-65 score:
I am, by no means, an expert. I am not perfect at remembering to score myself or giving myself the correct “treatment” in time, but this tool has helped me catch myself many times, and direct me towards self-care. Once I began screening myself after my mom introduced me to HALT, there was an undeniable difference to my third year of undergrad. Not only did I start enjoying the work for my campus club, but I stopped feeling like my co-leaders were not doing their part when I witnessed how our differences working together synergistically actually made our whole team stronger. Since then, I have also tried implementing other strategies (such as blocking rest-time into my weekly schedule and setting a daily alarm to turn off electronics for the night) to actively prevent burnout—which I think is an essential part of living well. It’s important to continuously modify our life strategies to our always-changing world. After all, thriving—not just surviving—is critical to both our professional and personal lives, and this is just the beginning of a lifelong journey of adapting and growing to life’s challenges.
