“So, I saw your Instagram story at 3 a.m. You made a thing. Please, tell me about the thing,” I probe senior digital media communications major Joey Echeverria.
“Oh gosh, yeah. We were shooting the last scene that I needed for my senior project. We finished, and we were like ‘wait a second, let’s not pack up. let me set up the lights, and let’s shoot a quick-little-fifteen-minute impromptu video podcast,’” Echeverria tells me.
The above mentioned quick-little-fifteen-minute impromptu video podcast is of Echeverria and his best friend Austin sitting identically on a violently floral couch.
“I threw it together last night instead of doing homework,” he says, grinning.
I was up to see the video drop because I was in the edit suite with my friend Maddie writing a half-hour TV documentary while listening to sped-up Mario Kart music and the Hannah Montana Movie soundtrack alternately. While writing the doc, I was also thinking about how soon I would have to start writing my next Cardinal & Cream piece, and how I would need someone to interview. Echeverria was the first person to come to mind, and our text conversation went as follows:
Though Echeverria was one of the first people I thought of, he wasn’t the only one, by far. Burnt-out college students are a dime a dozen, especially when finals get this close. The end of the semester always brings with it sleepless nights and endless assignments and the inevitable episode of complete and total burnout. Everybody is busy and nobody has time to attend to the stress that’s being stirred up inside of them because of their busyness. What keeps students going? While the stereotypical negative answer is fear of bad grades or failing classes (though I admit both of those are excellent motivators, to be sure), I’ve noticed more and more students around me that love their major and the work that they’re killing themselves to do. Then I noticed that I’m one of them.
Junior broadcast journalism major Maddie Stadinger and I stayed in the edit suite in Jennings until 5:30 in the morning. About a hundred times that night she said to me:
“It’ll get done because it has to get done.”
Sometimes the phrase reminded me of our quickly approaching deadline, but mostly it was a sort of strange, omnipotent motivator. This documentary had to get done because it just had to, so of course it would. We could’ve stopped at any point. I know I couldn’t have cared less about the grade I would get in that class at three in the morning. But we did it, and not out of any desire to get a passing grade, but because we cared about the project. We cared because the content of the documentary was close to our hearts, and we wanted to do it justice. Stadinger told me that what makes work like this worth it despite the stress is seeing all of the hours she puts in actually create a product. She said that the burnout comes because things aren’t always as easy as we want them to be.
“I’m my own worst enemy when it comes to stuff like that. I think everyone is,” Stadinger said.
“I’m my own biggest critic and biggest motivator,” Echeverria said.
When I walked into an empty classroom on the second floor of Jennings to interview him, only the dim, recessed lights were on, which created little spotlights all over the room. Echeverria was standing in between the rows of desks wearing his signature flip-flops, board shorts and a vaguely Hawaiian shirt. I was also in flip-flops, shorts and a considerably less Hawaiian shirt. He took one look at me and gestured to the nearest pocket of light and kicked off his flip-flops.
“We’ll probably end up sitting on the floor anyways.”
It was a floor-sittin’ kind of day.
“So, how emotionally checked in are you to college right now?”
“On a scale of one to ten, with ten being super checked in and focused, I’m probably like a three and a half, four maybe.”
“Do you like what you’re doing?”
“I love what I’m doing.”
“Why do you get burnt out when you love what you’re doing?”
“Because the stuff I’m doing right now I’m being told to do it, and I don’t like being told to do things. I like doing things at my own pace.”
Being told I have to do things is one of my own biggest reasons for burnout. This dislike seemed easier to reconcile during freshman and sophomore year. I was taking core classes about subjects that I wasn’t interested in, and it was simple to just complain, then buckle down and ride out the class. Now, things aren’t that simple, but they sure do feel better. I come into internal conflict when the thing I’m told to do is a thing that I actually enjoy doing and want to continue doing for the rest of my life. Not only is there the pressure of deadlines and grades but also the pressure from within myself to perform well. I’m not just passing World Civ classes anymore. Missing class or turning in half-baked-yet-passable work isn’t something I can afford to do now, and more importantly, it isn’t something that I want to do now. Being (more or less) forced to do things I love has made me into a more motivated person. Loving what I’m doing makes the burnout worth it.
Although I’ve gotten to see all of the checked-out seniors roll out of here every May for the last three years, I’m more excited than ever for that to be me next year.
“Do you have anything you want to say about the future?”
“I mean, I’m looking forward to it, being able to get out of here and actually go. . . live,” Echeverria says.
He smiles, and there’s a beat of silence before we erupt in sleep-deprived laughter.
“Not that I’m not living in college! I’ve just been here for four years, and I’ve had my experiences, and I just want to get out there and, I don’t want to say start living, but I want to start just. . . getting on with my life. Because college doesn’t last forever, and I need to get going where I’m going.”
