Burnout. A word that all graduate students know regardless of their area of study. This experience occurs when one’s mental, physical, and emotional abilities have been exhausted.
It is kind of ironic (and telling) that students in a psychology program suffer from burnout given that we are supposed to be “experts” on mental health and self-care. “You’re studying psychology what do you mean you’re having a break down, don’t you know how to fix yourself?” is often a sentiment thrown around by those who are confused as to why we sometimes burst into tears at the slightest inconvenience. However, as myself and my colleagues know, the entity of burnout spares no one.
Where does this burnout come from you ask? It is often a combination of program requirements, money difficulties, and a lack of free time. Sometimes it feels like you are working four jobs at once. You have your regular course load then practicum hours then dissertation work then your actual job that you need to feed and clothe yourself. In the few hours you actually have to yourself, you often find yourself catching up on homework or working at your job.
“It is important to engage in self-care!” is only a statement that people with time to indulge in self-care freely say to others. I cannot count the amount of times a professor told me to take some time for self-care while being completely oblivious to the fact that I have two papers, a test, and an 8 hour work shift taking up my time any given week. If I had a dollar for every time someone reminded me of the great importance of self-care, I could maybe make a dent in my tuition payments. Students are often faced with the choice of taking time for self-care or working a job during those few precious hours to provide for themselves. And to be fair it isn’t all the professors’ fault; they are not the ones who control our program’s funding. It is the university that really likes to twist the knife when it comes to program funding and tuition increases.
The program I attend provides very limited funding for students. There are currently about ten available student jobs for a program of around 100 students. These jobs usually pay around $1000 per semester which barely covers tuition for one credit hour (i.e. $1030 per hour). This funding does not even touch the exuberant amount of money students have to cash out in order to conduct research for their dissertations. One colleague of mine has to pay $2200 to complete only part of her research. And if she does not cough up this money then she might not graduate on time due to our dissertation requirement, which would in turn cost her around another $3100 every semester she does not complete her dissertation.
If you think the pandemic gave us any relief on tuition, then you would be wrong. Our university, unlike others across the country, actually decided to increase our program’s tuition by $25 per hour while also cutting the already limited amount of student jobs. This resulted in a $650 increase in yearly tuition combined with the fact that many of my colleagues, including myself, lost their jobs or were given reduced hours due to the pandemic.
The next time you hear someone complaining about how students nowadays don’t deserve student loan forgiveness because “in their day they were able to work 20 hours a week and pay off their tuition with no problems,” kindly remind them that inflation exists and funding is limited thanks to recent cuts in the federal education budget. And if you would like to help ease the burden of a student on the verge of burnout, please contact your state representative or congress person and ask them to support an increase in state and federal education funding to combat the effect of inflation and support the needs of students everywhere.
Not only graduate students suffer from burnout. Unfortunately, there are many people who suffer from this mental illness. If the disease is not treated, it can turn into even more difficult disease.