Every year, around the same time in spring, we ask the same question: Are students making excuses, or are they burnt out? 

Students get about halfway through the semester before it starts to become too much. Homework piles up, extracurriculars pick up and it just gets harder to keep up with everything. A lot of students want to give up, but this only makes the problem worse.

This year, instead of asking if students are burnt out, we should be asking how to motivate each other to stay focused because right now, MCHS students are having a hard time finding a reason to. 

During the school year, there are two major dips in motivation: once during the fall and again in the spring.

MCHS has tried to combat those dips with different initiatives such as Fall Fest and Beat the Blahs. These initiatives require students to raise their GPAs, increase their attendance or reduce their missing assignments to be able to participate in activities such as pie-ing teachers and sundae bars.

“Burnout is a very real thing,” says Director of Student Activities Mitchell Stengel, “it hits both adults and students at the end of semester one and at the beginning of semester two – and we try and do everything we can to combat it.”

These initiatives have done well in the past, but they only last for a few weeks of the semester, and now that they’re over, students are losing their focus again.

Students keep falling into the same cycle of procrastinating, which can make even small amounts of homework seem overbearing.

“I’m aware that [procrastinating] is bad for me,” says junior Ele Kinser, “but the thought of having to do the work that I’m procrastinating is just so overwhelming that I push it off until I have to do it because it feels like the safer option.”

The more that students procrastinate, the further behind they get, but at the same time, it can be incredibly hard to pull themselves out of this cycle. This is why after a break from school, like Thanksgiving break first semester and Spring break second semester, a lot of students have more motivation.

When burnout happens, students need to be able to relax and reset, but this becomes a problem when they don’t have a week-long break to give them that time.

Seniors also face their own problems during second semester. In general, burnout hits seniors harder, and this is because they lose a reason to stay motivated faster than their underclassmen.

“Once you’re admitted into a college,” says senior Kyra Hanneman, “you know that you’re safe … You start to realize that if I get a little bit of a lower grade, it doesn’t matter that much.”

This is a common mindset that seniors have, but when this group of students start to become less focused at school, it can easily cause underclassmen to adopt a similar mindset: If they don’t have to work, then why should I?

But this is making it harder for teachers to know how to teach their students during these slumps. 

“I have to try to make my class a little more engaging and think about how students are feeling,” says English and AVID teacher Heidie Dunn. “… How are things going, how are we feeling and how can we get remotivated?”

Teachers can try their best to adapt their teaching styles to student attitudes, but we have to remember that they are going through the same slumps as the students.

According to the National Education Association, 52% of teachers said that the majority of their stress comes from having to manage student behavior, and dealing with these types of burnout can contribute significantly to that.

Helping to reduce burnout in both teachers and students starts with prevention.

According to the American Psychiatry Association, some of the most effective methods to prevent burnout are taking breaks, setting boundaries between yourself and your work or engaging in self-care.

Ultimately, students can be given as many tools as possible, but they need to use them in order for them to be effective.

“You can lead a horse to water,” says Hanneman, “but you can’t make them drink.”

Make it a point to check in with yourself, and then check in with your friends because the only way to prevent burnout is to get ahead of it.