Students Johnathan Webster and Carson Graves discuss burnout and the complicated emotions surrounding it.
Transcript:
0:07: Welcome back to Chronversations.
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 Johnathan 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: 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: The freedom of choice is college’s most beautiful aspect
1:19: in allowing students to figure out what actually works for them.
1:28 I’d say, especially in my department, the workload specifically is what burns us out the most.
1:32: So you would say it’s just that compounding of having so much stuff happening all at once, relating to whatever your passion or career may be.
1:39: 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: really enjoy drawing a lot, and then once I decided to make a career out of going into it, 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 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, 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 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 taking a day or two for myself, just to unwind and relax, but yeah.
3:40: Do you think that part of that might be turning away from something that you fear? That this burnout isn’t an authentic feeling, and
3:50: you might be pushing away a passion you could have gone down 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 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 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, working out definitely helps, finding time to do stuff that you enjoy, be it reading, playing a game, and 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: 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 think knowing when it’s time to call it for a little bit, whether that’s a 5-minute pomodoro-style break just to let your brain refresh, or whether it’s time for a 15-minute walk. Taking that time away from the project for as long as you need 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 I’ve done previously gives me a sense of seeing the progress of, “Oh I know I could do better now,” and finding creative
5:35: ambition through that.
5:38: I’m trying to step back, talking with people that I’m close with, venting my frustrations with what’s going on, be it artist’s block or something related to the project I’m working on.
5:45: It’s nice to have, especially with the animation department, a team that’s all going through the same thing that we are. We have a shared experience and 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 columbiachronicle.com.
6:10: I’m Levi Libson.
6:11: Thanks for listening.
Copy edited by Venus Tapang
