I really just need to talk about this to someone. I’m in college and I’ve always loved to learn, but now I don’t feel motivated do my school work or to study, but at the same time, when a test roles around and I don’t know how to answer the questions I get stressed and care about trying to do well. I’ve also always beaten myself over the head about having good grades, my parents never had to push me to do good in school. I’m just so stressed about it, the semester is ending soon, and I’m scared I’m gonna fail 2 classes which will be then first time I’ve ever failed a class.
Not burnout in the adult, working sense no I don’t think so. That would be quite worrying and likely not actually caused by school / college.
School tired, absolutely. Generally speaking, in the adult world motivation is a nice to have, the need to have is discipline. Discipline does not care in the slightest if you want to do something or if you’re motivated to do it. Discipline is doing it no matter what because that is what you’ve decided that you will do.
The source of discipline is your parents, objectively they failed. Not out of malice mind you, just from not knowing that this was something they had to do. Since you did your schoolwork, a typical source of contention where a parent needs to instill discipline in their child, they didn’t identify that they needed to find some other way to teach you. Be it housework, training/exercise or hell even taking care of one self if you’re the “workaholic” type that needs to use discipline to force themselves to have fun and relax.
Now of course that train has sailed. So you need to teach yourself. Which is not easy but you’ll succeed. I find it helpful to think of discipline as something you get more of the more you use it. So start small, decide on something small that you should/need to do but struggle with. Maybe it’s brushing your teeth EVERY night or getting out of bed when the alarm rings or running laundry every weekend. Something, and then doing that until it’s either completely automated or you’ve got enough control over it that you know you’ll always be able to quickly force yourself to do it. Then move on to bigger fish. Perhaps it’s spending one hour (a specific hour helps, like 6-7 pm) doing schoolwork. Doesn’t even matter if you don’t even have schoolwork to do, just read course material again or look into an upcoming course. It needs to be mandatory, something you don’t allow yourself to ever cheat on.
Further never ever reward yourself with NOT doing a task like studying/training etc. Instead reward yourself with other things. A piece of candy at the most basic, an hour of watching TV/playing games or whatever other activities you want to do, that you don’t need discipline to do.
I hope this is helpful. Take care of yourself, you got this!
The tips you share towards the end are good, but I don’t think discipline is the guiding star there. Neither is it failing as a parent, if one’s child isn’t necessarily academically inclined, or otherwise has struggles with higher education.
Discipline does not work as you describe, and it does not fall so neatly into one specific category of discipline. Same as intelligence, there are different types of discipline.
And even then, there is no distinct “adult” burnout that is something one can not get in college. That just sounds diminishing and dismissive, and can cause a lot of dangerous and unhealthy coping mechanisms or habits to form for anyone battling with very real burnout, be it in college or in other kind of working environment.
But since your points towards the end are actually helpful and something that is widely recommended for different kind of habit forming endeavors, I’m going to go ahead and assume that you are not intentionally malicious or dismissive with your opening remarks, rather just a product of your environment, which has taught you a very narrow view of a very common issue.
You sound like you mean well, but this is not helpful advice. You are essentially telling someone who is obviously a conscientious person and struggling that they have a character flaw.