Students battle burnout long before hitting job market

Near the end of any major undertaking there's a time of let- down. Inspiration is history, and the buoyant bouncy step which has taken you this far now seems, well, really annoying.

Students label this phase "senior-itis," but the same feeling lurks at the end of any long project. Call it buyer's remorse, or project burn-out or lagging morale - it adds up to the same thing: Not only is the bloom off the rose, the rose is made from discount- grade plastic.

I've been there recently. When I went back to college two years ago, I was as happy as a raccoon in a dumpster. After six years at home with my son, he was ready for first grade and I was ready for a new challenge. We started school on the same day, each lugging a new backpack stocked with the school supplies we had picked out together weeks earlier. It was a bright day - sunny, clear and full of adventure.

Five semesters later, my son is happily tackling long division, while I've mutated into a bad attitude with skin. Life no longer leaps, but plods - a seemingly endless round of laundry, long-winded 17th century poets and unfinished term papers. As the song says, the thrill is gone.

My attitude began to dive at the beginning of this semester. While sitting at the computer and waiting for inspiration, a voice deep within grumbled: "Does the world really need another term paper on The Taming of the Shrew? Hasn't humanity spent enough time dissecting everything Shakespeare ever wrote, burped, grunted or said within hearing distance? What more is there to say?"

The voice had a point: Even if there are unplumbed depths in Shakespeare, what were the chances that some undergraduate would find them? My fingers went limp on the keyboard, as inspiration scuttled away like a mouse faced with a snake.

I began to think about how many people get "real" jobs based on their well-developed opinions about Shakespeare's lesser comedies. I imagined myself on an Interstate 25 off-ramp holding a sign "Hungry. Will discuss Renaissance literature for food. God bless."

My eyes glazed over, the screensaver kicked in and my inner voice wouldn't stop. I pictured old-growth forests clear-cut so that thousands of undergraduates could produce term papers destined to first clog inboxes, then landfills. I imagined these term papers contributing to the decline of society, the environment and western civilization as we know it.

I gave up as I sought out the one sure cure for angst. I could eat only so many Oreos. Eventually, I waddled back to the computer, ignored the voice of my Inner Nietzsche, brushed the crumbs off my face and wrote the paper. The writing lurched more than it flowed - dragging the unwilling words from my stubborn brain felt like trying to walk a cat on a leash. Nothing artistic here, just a job that had to be finished.

Given the option, I would never willingly learn perseverance. Inspiration would percolate through me in a constant rush as it does for the gifted few. But for the rest of us, there is comfort that sheer doggedness can accomplish impressive results. The evidence is everywhere. This morning I drank my coffee and watched the squirrels conquer my "squirrel-proof" bird feeder - proof that even pea-brains can succeed if they're persistent enough.

- Robin Murray Krug is a non-traditional (older) student at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs who has lived and worked in Colorado Springs for 15 years. She plans to graduate next spring with a degree in English literature.

Next week: William North on health care.

Copyright 1999
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.