Sky Anne Watson talks about Disco Night Jam and Rock & Roll Productions.
Transcript:
0:07: Welcome back to Conversations.
0:09: I’m your host, Levi Libson.
0:14: As students of a creative occupation, we often find ourselves questioning what it means to be burnt out and if that’s something truly authentic that we are feeling.
0:22: The World Health Organization defines burnout as an occupational phenomenon with patterns of showing distance towards your aspirations and a general decrease in efficiency.
0:30: This week I spoke with two students, Carson Graves and Jonathan Webster, about these feelings and how they’ve experienced them in the past.
0:37: , my name is Carson Graves.
0:40: I’m a senior animation major and my pronouns are he, him.
0:43: My name is Jonathan Webster.
0:45: I am a theatrical, sound and lighting designer, a theater tech and design major to be exact.
0:50: I’m in my final semester here at Columbia, and I use he, him pronouns.
0:54: Final semester, how does that feel?
0:55: , ask me that in two months.
0:59: What parts of student life?
1:00: Do you think contribute the most to burnout?
1:02: I think attempting to find the balance between work and life.
1:06: I think college does a wonderful job at giving you the freedom to make your own mistakes.
1:13: I think the, the freedom of choice is kind of like colleges.
1:19: in allowing students to figure out what works for them.
1:32: I’d say it’s just compounding Whatever your passion or career may be, yes, there’s a lot of balls in the air that we have to juggle, specifically for myself, I’m producing the short film for the 2D hand drawn section of the animation department, so it’s a lot of juggling 26 people in our class and then.
1:53: Making sure everyone stays on track and the film is on time.
1:57: Losing interest in our ambitions can be a normal thing.
2:00: What follows is the differentiating quality between most people.
2:03: Do you stick with your craft or naturally phase it out of your life?
2:06: Have you ever lost joy in something that you really loved, a passion or a hobby?
2:11: Yeah, I mean, I used to.
2:12: I really enjoyed drawing a lot and then once I decided to make a career out of going into it, just the repetitive nature of doing it all the time for work kind of took the joy out of it.
2:23: , I find it happens at least once a year, normally in the winter seasons, or when work just gets too constant, when it just becomes work when you lose the joy in it.
2:35: Do you prefer to push through burnout or step away from it?
2:38: I think I would like to choose to step away from it.
2:42: But I think the harsh answer is I do really push through.
2:47: I mean, right now, I’m, I’m at the beginning of the state of where I could find myself getting burnt out.
2:52: I’ve put up 6 shows in the span of 2 months, and boy am I a sleepy little guy, but I really do appreciate the work that I do, and I do find that even through pushing through it, I can find.
3:07: Pride in knowing I can complete the work and pride year by year in finding that I find more and more solutions to my burnout or I find different ways to push past it in a healthier manner.
3:18: I, I feel like I can actually Emotionally regulate myself a little bit more and, and still be a person even in the moments where I’m experiencing that decay of joy in the work that I do.
3:30: I kind of push through.
3:31: I need to take the healthier approach of probably taking like a day or two for myself just to unwind and relax, but yeah.
3:40: Do you think that part of that might be that, you know, turning away from something you fear that this burnout isn’t like an authentic feeling and that.
3:50: You might be pushing away a passion that you could have gone down and and fulfilled.
3:55: Yeah, absolutely.
3:56: And then I also feel like if I take a day to myself, things will kind of just fall apart, so I have to kind of keep going through everything to make sure the ship stays afloat.
4:06: Do you think that burnout is something avoidable or just manageable?
4:11: I’d say it’s.
4:14: Avoidable if you.
4:17: Develop healthy habits well in your work life, which is something I think a lot of us aren’t great about doing.
4:25: What would you say that those habits would be?
4:27: I mean, like working out definitely helps, finding time to do stuff that you enjoy, be it reading, playing a game, so on and so forth.
4:36: I think if you’re smiling at the end of the work session, you’ve done it right.
4:39: I think once you get to the point where you can tell you’re breaking, maybe that’s why they call it a breaking point, so you go and take a break until it gets a little bit better.
4:49: , yeah, I, I think knowing when it’s time to call it for a little bit, whether that’s a 5-minute pomodoro style break just to like let your brain refresh or whether it’s a time for a 15-minute walk, I think Taking that time away from the project for as long as it needs to be is one of the healthier things you could do.
5:11: And this puts me right on to my last question for you, which is what actually helps when you’re experiencing this feeling of burnout?
5:17: I find that I’ve documented a lot of previous work that I’ve done, and sometimes taking a step away from the work I am doing and watching something that I’ve done previously gives me a sense of like seeing the progress of like, oh I know I could do better now and finding like creative.
5:35: Ambition through that.
5:38: I’m trying to step back and then like talking with people that I’m close with saying venting my frustrations with what’s going on, be it artist block or something related to the project I’m working on.
5:45: It’s nice to have, especially with the animation department and having a team that’s all kind of going through the same thing that we are we have the shared experience and like we can rant to each other and get through whatever we’re working on.
6:05: Make sure to stay up to date with campus and Metro news at Columbia Chronicle.com.
6:10: I’m Levi Libson.
6:11: Thanks for listening.
