Dance Magazine: Life as a college dancer is far from easy. Students juggle classes, rehearsals, exams and performances—not to mention nerves about an uncertain future. Dancers sometimes dismiss what they're feeling as routine stress, not realizing they've actually become burned out, says Nicole Detling, PhD, CMPC, a mental performance coach with Ballet West.
11 comments:
Burnout is not a true fear I had until the past few breaks from school. When I went on this past summer break, I was exhausted physically, emotionally, and mentally, from the school year. I assumed this was entirely normal. Yet as I was approaching my upcoming internship, I felt a sense of dread in returning to work. I became worried that I was going to be unhappy all summer and return to school unrested and unrefreshed. Luckily, I had a good amount of downtime, and was able to spend time with people, and cook meals, and have a real, complete summer. I was excited to go to work, and I was even excited to come back to school. Schedules fluctuate, but I have continued to prioritize many self-care aspects of my life that were not as important to me as before. While this article is geared towards dance, I find that the lessons it presents are very applicable beyond. Burnout prevention is just as important as burnout itself.
While reading this, I replaced “dance” with my intended interest of study, along with the all encompassing concept of design. I feel like there have been times where I have been on the verge of burnout a few times. When you do theater in the same room every single day, I sometimes feel like I am going around in circles rather than moving forward. I think that the tip to find other interests besides your major has been the most important for me, because when I get to the point where I feel like I have plateaued, at least I am growing in other facets of my life. That extra reassurance bleeds into my role as a designer, and I get a resurge of inspiration that draws me away from burnout. This list offers important reminders, one of which being the simple fact that we are humans, at the core of our work, who need sleep, rest, support, and various passions to be our best.
Burnout is a real problem faced by many aspiring artistic professionals who are studying in an intensive program. I truly believe that burnout is caused from an overwhelming passion to do well in your aspired field, which is a positive thing until it becomes something that drives you into the ground. This article discusses using downtime appropriately and effectively, as many people who are susceptible to burn out feel that they must be training all the time. This is something that I find myself struggling with, because when I feel that I have a full plate of work to do I have to use every minute of free time to knock things off of my to-do list. This article also suggests talking to your professors, which is a really great option which sometimes gets overlooked in times of stress. Overall, I think its important to look ahead to the future and anticipate times of stress in order to plan ahead, rather than feeling behind.
Understanding yourself and your limits are so important. I completely understand that in out field, we have serious deadlines that need to be met, or there are times when we just need to go the extra mile in terms of pushing ourselves. That's fine. It becomes a problem when it becomes a daily routine to be doing a big push or to be going the extra mile every single day. I feel as though we also have a tendency to glorify things like pulling all-nighters or working for a ridiculous amount of hours. Making this a habit is not something to advertise or be proud of. Eventually, you are going to crash. Or crack. It is important to understand yourself and find the balance. This article has some very solid points. Like having other hobbies. Being able to step away from work and do something else helps to keep that balance in our lives. I've found that it also helps to keep me loving what I do. Lots of times when I'm on break and doing something different, within a matter of time, I find myself missing my work. So I'm happy to get back and start up again. This definitely helps to prevent burnout.
Burnout is something that I deal with quite frequently, and it often feels unavoidable with the amount of work I have. I always get so tired from everything I try to put into school that I often no longer have the energy to do any of the creative things I want to do on my own. This article talks about the steps to prevent burnout before it even happens, which I’ve already failed considering I don’t get enough sleep or rest. My downtime is usually consumed by thoughts that keep me from relaxing and I barely have the mental capacity to handle outside hobbies along with my school stuff. The rest of the article was pretty much just more unhelpful things about telling you to bounce back from burnout without really giving steps on how to. It would’ve been nice if it had given some actual advice rather than stating things that are obvious.
As others have noted here, every word in this article is applicable to theater, and to the CMU SoD. That is, afterall, why it on this blog. Burnout is incredibly common here, and there aren't a lot of safeguards in place to prevent it. The baseline curriculum in the School of Drama is considered overloaded by most of the university, and most of us take extra classes. Yes, we are frequently reminded to get sleep, and reminded that we have myriad tools at our disposal-- CaPS, Health Services, our advisors, etc.-- but the culture in the School of Drama is geared towards burnout. While some of this comes with the territory of theatre, CMU can be even more intense than the industry at large. A culture of competition pervades, and prevailing policy is to let students take as many classes as they can pass. The only real cap is the 75 unit university cap, over which tuition increases. Even with the population that we have, and the higher than average capacity for work of most of our students, it is all to easy to run yourself into the ground, and often, you don't realize it until you're already burned out.
Burnout is such a real and honestly frightening aspect of this career and I'm very glad some people, including this article, are trying to address that. The arts are a very strange career field to attempt to balance. They are incredibly time consuming, and most of the things normal people do to relax, end up being tied into our work somehow. Some people draw or craft in order to relieve stress. Our stress is caused by our drawing and crafting. Others spend time with friends in order to settle down, most of our friends are the people we work with. Or people watch theatre or film or television. That’s our job. We look at every piece of art with such a finely tuned eye, that it is hard to let that art breathe. We scrutinize every detail, criticize it for historical inaccuracies, or unrealistic moments, or awkward design choices, the little things that most people miss. It is difficult for us to escape our work because our work is a reflection of humanity and society and its built out of the things we experience everyday.
I like most people have experienced burnout before and it’s very frustrating!! It’s so hard to get enough sleep with our major and it feels like I’m constantly struggling to get enough sleep. Even in high school I struggled to get enough sleep and stay focused. I was pretty burned out from high school over the summer and then I worked all summer so it was pretty hard getting used to the schedule here at CMU Drama without getting burned out. Winter break was really great and I was able to rest and recover a little. My New Years resolution has been to get on a better sleep schedule and so far I’ve been pretty successful. This article has some really great tip so help prevent burnout! I’m hoping that I will be able to rest during spring break and over the summer! I think getting exercise and eating healthy has made a huge difference for me as well!
I think this article is extremely beneficial to everyone regardless of what you're studying. I have had several talks with my high school theatre director on how to avoid burnout and stay physically and mentally healthy. Some of the points we discussed are the same as those that are mentioned in this article, and I always try to keep them in mind. I have found it a bit difficult to find different hobbies or activities that would give me a break from the pressures of the school of drama, but luckily I don't feel that I'm any where close to that point. I would just like to make sure that I don't get to that point. I think that it's important to have friends that do completely different things than you do. I always found that that is one great way to take a breather and not have to think at all about the stresses of being in a college dance or theatre program. I'm currently not worried about burning out, and hopefully I don't reach the point where I need to worry.
This article brings up a serious problem in performing arts fields in general. As a person with a brother who is in a BFA Dance program and has worked extensively with dancers, burnout is seriously no joke. The amount of times I’ve helped my brother stretch while he does his homework is more than I can count. The pressure to be at peak performance is high in dance but that pressure comes with an increasing amount of injuries. This article provides good ideas on how to prevent burnout but it doesn’t touch on how to deal with the pressure added to you by your professors and the amount that is expected of you in those types of fields. It seems more like a “just deal with it by using these methods” instead of giving information on why this is. Killing yourself for your art will never be the answer. I know we’ve been working on this mantra at CMU Drama, which has been received well, but the industry still has some catching up to do.
I don’t know a lot about what dancers go through in college, but based on the advice in this article, it seems like the environment in a dance program is very similar to that in our drama program, or other drama programs. I think the piece of advice that I connected with the most was to remember the power of dance, or in my case theatre. So often I get overwhelmed with school work that I forget that I am going to school to study the thing that has brought me the most joy in my life since I was 3 years old, and that is incredible. I have found that when I focus on why I am here, I enjoy it more and feel a lot less stressed. I also think obviously that getting enough sleep is a great piece of advice, but sometimes in my life if it comes to doing my homework or getting more sleep, I am always going to choose doing the work because if I have the work done I will be less stressed, and I am not really sure how to fix that.
Post a Comment