7-Opinion

F

our weeks into the new 
school 
year, 
the 
word 

burnout may seem like 

an inappropriate term to describe 
the typical University of Michigan 
student. The transition back to 
in-person school from online classes 
and extracurriculars, however, is 
challenging. In the past year, clubs 
and classes often were less structured 
and offered much more flexibility 
with asynchronous lectures, open-
note exams and forgiving attendance 
policies. 

“Last year while everything was 

online, I decided to join a couple 
more clubs and start working in 
a research lab,” LSA junior Alexa 
Samani said. “I felt that I had enough 
time to do everything I wanted to; 
however, now that mostly everything 
is in person, I feel very overwhelmed 
with the amount of time taken up by 
classes and extracurriculars.”

Asynchronous classes allowed 

some students to create their own 
schedules and, occasionally, take 
online exams open-note. While 
asynchronous options were often 
necessary to adapt to the changing 
needs of students and professors 
during the COVID-19 pandemic, 
these classes may have caused some 
students to go over a year without 
practicing their organizational or 
study skills. Similarly, some clubs 
and other extracurriculars were less 
demanding during the pandemic 
since they often consisted of entirely 
virtual participation. While the 
return of structure and normalcy 
is a relief to many students and 
faculty, the sudden change may put 
students at higher risk of burning 
out. Taking the steps to recognize the 

challenges of returning to campus 
and preventing burnout before it 
happens can help students transition 
with much less stress. 

Burnout can be defined as “a 

negative emotional, physical and 
mental 
reaction 
to 
prolonged 

study that results in exhaustion, 
frustration, lack of motivation and 
reduced ability in school.” Once 
you reach the point of burnout, it is 
difficult to jump back into a positive 
and productive mindset. While 
it may feel as though the normal, 
busy routine of college life shouldn’t 
necessarily cause burnout, students 
need to give themselves time to 
adjust or they will risk overextending 
themselves. 

It has been over a year since 

everything was in person — as 
we transition back, every facet 
of student life feels intensified. 
“Starting summer job and internship 
recruitment in person is much more 
stressful because you are constantly 
around other people talking about 
it and comparing experiences,” 
explained 
LSA 
junior 
Hannah 

Shipley.

Some students may be more 

prone to burnout than others due to 
other compounding factors, causing 
students that do struggle to question 
the validity of their experiences. 
“The monotony of having to be on 
Zoom and my laptop for over eight 
hours a day every weekday for the 
last few semesters made me feel 
mentally fatigued and burnt out 
much quicker than I had ever felt 
before,” LSA junior Ali Abdalla said. 
“Having in-person classes forces me 
to go outside and see the sun on my 
way to class and generally motivates 
me to study or do work outside 
of my house.” It is important that 
even students who do not expect 
burnout from in-person learning 

understand the stress others may be 
experiencing. The entire University 
of Michigan community should be 
empathetic toward those who are 
struggling and take steps to prevent 
burnout. 

On the surface level, there are 

basic steps students can take to 
prevent burnout. These include 
making time for enjoyable activities 
and socializing, exercising, getting 
outside, developing relationships with 
professors, avoiding procrastination, 
improving time management and 
maintaining a work-life balance. 

More specifically, however, it is 

essential that leaders of organizations 
reevaluate the structures and systems 
that existed prior to COVID-19 to 
allow students the time to readjust. 
Continuing to offer flexibility and 
empathy for members is essential 
because it can help students find their 
proper work-life balance and manage 
their time more effectively. 

Students must also advocate for 

themselves and their own needs. 
Communicating 
with 
professors 

and student organization leaders 
about struggles instead of ignoring 
them and pushing forward allows 
for a more productive environment. 
Club leaders and professors can 
then understand what their students 
are experiencing and help students 
succeed while having their personal 
needs met. 

Burnout has always been a 

challenge for college students, and it 
is likely every person will experience 
burnout at some point in their life, 
whether in school or their career. 
However, the sudden transition from 
online to in-person life elevates the 
risk of burning out considerably. It is 
essential that all members of the U-M 
community recognize the unique 
challenges of this semester and take 
the steps to prevent burnout now. 

W

alk around campus, 
and you’ll see people 
in varying stages of 

leaving the pandemic behind. Some 
might be roaming around without 
masks, basking in the sunshine. 
Most would be heading to an 
in-person class or to a library to 
study. After sundown, they might 
trade the library for a frat party. 
Then there are Saturdays, with 
clogged streets and a Big House 
full of more than 100,000 people 
cheering on our Wolverines. Even 
the buses are going back to their 
pre-pandemic routes.

Coming into this semester, I 

wanted this. I wanted a taste of the 
normal college experience, rather 
than 
the 
pandemic-affected, 

virtual one I ended up getting. We 
weren’t usual sophomores; most of 
us were as unaware as freshmen 
about Ann Arbor. The University 
of Michigan understood that this 
might be a common sentiment 
among the class of 2024 and 
included us in many Welcome 
Week events.

It was almost intimidating to 

be around people at first. The 
pandemic had left us socially 
rusty. But apart from some initial 
awkwardness, 
we 
all 
slowly 

got used to the small social 
interactions that are part of the 
classroom experience.

Just as I started settling in, 

a 
second 
pandemic-induced 

behavior crept up: hyperalertness 
towards coughing and similar 

COVID-19 symptoms. The echoing 
sound of so many people coughing 
brought some uneasiness, but I 
brushed it aside. After all, weren’t 
we all vaccinated and masked up? 
It’s probably not COVID-19, I told 
myself.

Then people in my hall started 

getting sent to quarantine. There 
was a spike of COVID-19 cases, 
with the first two weeks of classes 
seeing 
over 
460 
documented 

positive cases. It became a part 
of my waking up routine to read a 
few COVID-19 notification emails, 
either of a COVID-19 case in my 
dorm or in one of my classes. The 
emails didn’t have much useful 
information (with no mention of 
which class, making it very vague 
if you had multiple large lectures 
on the same day), but they got 
COVID-19 back on my mind.

I started thinking about what 

I’d do if I contracted the virus. 
While vaccines certainly do a great 
job at preventing severe disease, a 
positive test result would still end 
up sidelining anyone for 10-14 days. 
I went on Canvas and checked if all 
my classes uploaded recordings. 
I was very disappointed to find 
out that almost half of mine did 
not. Additionally, some of the 
recordings that were uploaded 
had issues like the microphone not 
being turned on.

What makes this worse is that 

a lot of professors enforce lecture 
attendance. How are students who 
are quarantining supposed to stay 
in compliance? Or even stay on top 
of coursework?

Before 
the 
pandemic, 
this 

would 
be 
inconvenient 
but 

excusable. Many professors may 
lack the know-how to record their 
classes, or classrooms might not be 
equipped to do so. However, after 
two and a half remote semesters, 
this excuse doesn’t hold water. 
We’ve handled classes over Zoom 
where professors had to handle 
massive online meetings. Many 
buildings have also had equipment 
upgrades 
to 
support 
Lecture 

Capture (the lecture recording 
program connected to Canvas 
which can also simultaneously 
record the class slides) covering 
most classrooms used by LSA and 
College of Engineering courses. 
Set-up is also relatively easy 
compared to managing vast online 
meetings, with professors needing 
to request time slots for recordings 
and wearing the recorder when 
the time comes. For lecturers and 
professors who aren’t comfortable, 
training is also provided.

One might argue that putting 

in the effort to make recording 
classes more widespread might 
not be so urgent now. COVID-19 
case numbers have fallen after 
the initial spike, but I would 
counter that this is something that 
will help students long after the 
pandemic is over. Students will no 
longer feel forced to go to classes 
when feeling ill to avoid missing 
out on content.

It boils down to a choice. Do we 

try to go back to exactly how things 
were before the pandemic and 
forget everything? Or do we try to 
keep the good things we learned? 
As the semester progresses, I hope 
the University opts to go more 
often with the latter.

I

’ve never considered myself to 
be well-versed in the language 
of travel. I can remember the 

finer details, but they only leave a faint 
impression. For me, the experience is 
defined by my emotions, not the other 
way around. However, looking back 
on my childhood, I treated vacations 
as a semi-conscious experience, 
enjoyed in the moment and then 
mostly forgotten, with nothing but 
the feeling to be savored. The goal 
was to numb my mind as a means 
of escapism. And in 2014, my family 
desperately needed an escape. 

Near the end of May, my mom 

was diagnosed with stage two breast 
cancer. She wouldn’t have her first 
surgery until July and until then we 
wouldn’t know whether or not she 
needed chemotherapy (we would 
later find out she didn’t). Suddenly 
normality had an end date. In the 
meantime, we continued on with a 
sense of caution, trying not to dwell 
on the worst possible outcome. 

Myrtle Beach, S.C., was poised as 

our temporary escape. We had spent 
many weeks in the summer by the 
different lakes of Northern Michigan, 
but never had we stayed by the ocean. 
My sister and I were excited; our dad 
was afraid. We weren’t very good 
swimmers and shark sightings were 
common. But we were going with 
family friends who’d frequented the 
area. We would be safe and, most 
importantly, have time as a normal 
family before the inevitable. 

Not everything could be frozen 

in time. I was having my own 
development; I was beginning to 
grow into a woman. I had been 
getting periods for a few months 
now, I got my first bottle of tinted 
moisturizer, I graduated to bras from 
PINK. I was growing aware of my 

own sexuality, but I was still a child 
and I wanted to stay that way. It was 
a delusion, thinking I could maintain 
control. 

Myrtle Beach had a pulse unlike 

anywhere I’d ever been. Vacations for 
us were usually spent in the isolation 
of a cottage or private resort. I’d never 
seen such a wide range of experiences 
all occurring within a few feet of 
each other: strolling families with 
tiny children, college-aged friends 
stumbling drunk, adults struggling 
with addiction and homelessness. Of 
them all, I was most oblivious to the 
attitudes of young adults, mostly the 
men, but I could feel their electric 
energy as they cruised down the road 
next to the hotel. It both scared and 
excited me. 

The hotel itself was bare, but we 

didn’t mind. We spent most of our time 
by the ocean and hotel pools. The beach 
itself was expectedly remarkable. The 
saltwater stung my eyes, but I kept 
going back in until I could barely see 
and my skin burned. We drank non-
alcoholic piña coladas and pretended 
they were real. Mom and Dad floated 
with us down a circular lazy river, again 
and again for hours. 

Across 
the 
road, 
a 
green-

painted cafe with soft booths and 
air conditioning balanced out the 
excitement of the beach. Smiles and 
soft South Carolina drawls greeted 
us when we entered. We made 
conversation with the waiters and 
other customers, where we were 
from, where we were going and what 
grits are exactly. 

It was sweet. It was almost real, my 

mind subdued at last. It was the road 
around the hotel that awoke me from 
my dreamlike haze.

Night or broad daylight, it made no 

difference. We’d be walking between 
our hotel and our friends’, tankinis 
on and towels draped around our 
shoulders. 

Cars honking as they whizz by. 

Who are they honking at? 
Male passengers lean out of the car. 
Are they looking at us? 
“Hey sexy!” 
Who are they yelling at? 
“Dance for us!” 
Oh. 
“Don’t wear your bathing suits 

near here anymore,” warned our 
parents as they herded us inside. 
It happened anyway, every day, 
multiple times a day. 

I had never been sexually harassed 

before. I didn’t even know what those 
words meant. But I felt them and I was 
embarrassed and confused. Is it wrong 
to be wearing this swimsuit in public? 
Didn’t they notice that our parents 
were right next to us? Didn’t they 
know we were children, just 12 and 
14 years old? I had so many questions, 
some of which still I don’t know the 
answers to and probably never will. 

Beneath my discomfort, a sense of 

pride blossomed. I knew their words 
were not motivated by kindness, 
yet I felt almost complimented. 
I wondered if those reactions 
meant I was pretty. Insecurity 
inspired my thoughts; as a child just 
starting puberty, I relied on others 
for confidence. But as I gained 
awareness of myself and the realities 
facing me, the pride slowly melted 
away, leaving nothing but shame. 

Though lacking the vocabulary 

to describe it accurately, during that 
trip I realized the pervasiveness of 
anonymity in public spaces; the sound 
moves quickly and the source escapes 
into the crowd of people or into the air 
with a speeding bike or car. You may 
never see their face, but you’ve been 
violated. 

It would be nonsensical to blame 

Myrtle Beach as an entity or even 
as an idea. Its quick and loose 
atmosphere doesn’t cause catcalling, 
rather people abuse those qualities. 

Opinion

BRITTANY BOWMAN

Managing Editor

Stanford Lipsey Student Publications Building

420 Maynard St. 

Ann Arbor, MI 48109

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H 
 

ey you! Do you want 
to explore the world? 
Do you want to do 

interesting things with interesting 
people? Do you want to get paid to 
do it? I’d like to tell you how you can, 
all while helping out your fellow 
Americans. Our country faces many 
problems, but today, I would like 
to focus on just three of them. The 
first is polarization. We are more 
divided than we have been in recent 
memory, 
and 
this 
polarization 

seems to spread to a new sector of 
our society every day. The second is 
physical infrastructure. Our roads 
are covered with potholes, many of 
our public housing developments are 
in states of disrepair and the majesty 
of our national parks is obscured by 
decaying infrastructure. Finally, our 
young people are more aimless than 
they have been in recent history. 
There is a solution to all of these 
things, and it is a robust national 
service program. It is time that we, as 
a country, invest in one year of service 
for 18-year-olds to do work that needs 
to be done, cut down polarization and 
help millions of young people find 
their ways in life. 

What do I mean by a national 

service? I mean enlisting every 
18-year-old and sending them off 
to work in a different part of the 
country for a year. Filling potholes 
in Kentucky, giving vaccines in New 
York or killing invasive snakes in 
Florida. These are just a few of the 
things they will be doing, each new 
public servant will be given a stipend 
of around $500 a month, as well as 
food and housing to go along with it. I, 
along with many before me, propose 
that every person who graduates 
high school should be expected to 
serve, barring any major exceptions 
such as health problems or childcare 
responsibilities. 

Our country is more divided now 

than it has been in recent history. 
A smaller and smaller number of 

Americans can say they have people 
close to them with differing political 
views. Exposing young Americans 
to people with different views will 
do good for developing a more 
tolerant, less polarized society. We 
saw a similar effect occur when the 
military was desegregated in 1948. 
Units that were desegregated showed 
more tolerant behavior towards those 
different from themselves, and unit 
performance improved. For many 
historical reasons, we are a politically 
polarized 
country. 
Democrats 

and Republicans shop at different 
stores and work different jobs. We 
need a program to funnel young 
people together, even if only for 12 
months, so that the next generation 
of Americans with different social 
identities can recognize each other’s 
shared humanity.

We live in a time with sky-high 

rates of teen depression. Many 
young people are aimless, often self-
medicating the empty feeling they 
experience with drugs and alcohol. 
A national service would allow young 
people to connect with their labor 
in a way not possible throughout 
schooling. It allows them to socialize 
with other young people while 
also affirming their commitment 
to making a better world for 
their 
neighbors. 
Research 
has 

demonstrated that service for others 
is rewarding both because of the 
immediate feel-good effects of doing 
something good, but also because 
of the beneficial social relationships 
that people gain through it.

Ignoring the benefits to the 

conscripts, our country still has a lot 
of work to do. Take infrastructure 
for example. The American Society 
of Civil Engineers reports that 43% 
of our nation’s roads are in either 
poor or mediocre condition. Our 
national parks are also in states of 
disrepair, with billions of dollars 
of repairs needed to get them up 
to snuff. Rivers are polluted, the 
unhoused are suffering and forest 
fires are rampant. There is so much 
good that approximately 3.5 million 
civil service foot soldiers could do 

for a nation with problems like ours. 
A model for this sort of program can 
be found in the Civilian Conservation 
Corps of the 1930s. The CCC did 
some of the most important work of 
the 20th century, and it is our duty to 
make sure that their work does not go 
to waste by allowing our country to 
wallow in disrepair.

Some critics cite this kind of 

program’s financial cost. But the cost 
of this program, even if it reaches 
the $75 billion mark, will be worth 
it several times over. It doesn’t just 
benefit the participants; it also 
enhances the ability of the federal 
government to get things done. 
We absolutely can expect that the 
government will be able to utilize 
these millions of young people doing 
their national service to all areas of 
the government. For example, the 
price of running the CDC will go 
down because the custodian will be 
someone doing their national service, 
or the price of getting seniors their 
social security payments will fall 
because the front desk assistant at the 
social security office will be someone 
serving their country. This hopefully 
wouldn’t displace current, often 
unionized, government workers, but 
instead, would add on to the capacity 
of the government to do good.

I support a national service 

because 
we 
have 
millions 
of 

unfulfilled young people and millions 
of potholes to fill, trees to plant and 
homeless shelters to build. The cost is 
negligible compared to the desperate 
need. Many other developed nations 
have an expectation of service, like 
South Korea and Sweden, but unlike 
them, we wouldn’t require service in 
the armed forces. I know that I would 
have loved a government-mandated 
gap year between high school and 
college, and I imagine many of my 
peers would have as well. Even the 
most put-together young people 
need time to breathe, decompress 
and evaluate. And what better way 
to do it than building paths on a 
beautiful Montana mountainside 
with Americans of all colors, creeds 
and abilities.

It’s time for a national service
Saltwater awakening

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
8 — Wednesday, October 6, 2021 

UMich students, let’s address burnout together

LIZZY PEPPERCORN

Opinion Columnist

ELIZABETH WOLFE

Opinion Columnist

Accessibility in inaccessible times

JULIAN BARNARD
Opinion Senior Editor

SIDDHARTH PARMAR

Opinion Columnist

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