College, Burnout, and the Quest for Rest

reclaiming our identities as children of God who are designed for rest

This article is part of the Claritas fall 2023 issue, Stages. Read the full print release here.

By: Emily Nelson

Overworked

In high school, I had this philosophy that the best time to do homework was between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. I felt as though, even running on no sleep, I could thrive and produce excellent work. In my senior year of high school, I was just beginning to learn the importance of balance. My identity was fully rooted in my achievements and involvement in clubs. At the time, I was an officer for six different clubs, worked part-time, ran cross country, and played violin. I thought that to be “well balanced,” I needed to be involved in a variety of different disciplines that would demonstrate a diverse skill set. To this end, I had stretched myself entirely too thin. Exhaustion was an understatement. I had forgotten that a critical component of balance was rest.

My view of myself was skewed. I found my identity in the things that I did. I was fueled by the false idea that I had to earn my purpose in life. To have value, I needed to go above and beyond in every aspect of my life. But where was this pressure coming from? No one had ever told me that I wasn’t good enough. There was no value system placed upon me that calculated how good I was based on my efforts. And yet by overworking myself, I fed the false idea that my identity was rooted solely in my achievements and accomplishments.

I still struggle with this problem. I am tempted to let my insecurities drive my life, and I try to avoid them with an overfilled schedule and a list of accomplishments. My Google Calendar is a testament to my busy schedule. I ignorantly believe that with the right combination of colored squares, I can magically transform the twenty-four hours offered to me into a sprinting marathon toward success. 

If  I continue, however, to find my identity and worth in the things that I do, I know that I will burn out. At Cornell, I am surrounded by students working hard to secure their futures and neglecting their need for rest. A Daily Sun article titled  “College of Engineering Reduces Credit Limit, Citing Mental Health Concerns” explains how engineering students put so much stress on excelling that Cornell had to lower the number of credits they are allowed to take per semester as a way to battle burnout. [1] The president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities said that the high-pressure culture of STEM creates enormous stress. “There’s often high-stakes testing and the assumption that if you don’t do well on your first few exams, then you don’t cut it in the field.” [2] Students try to streamline their education and as a result, they cannot regulate their schedules without outside limitations stopping them from overdoing it. I am afraid that I will fall victim to this obsessive workflow, just as I did in high school.

Foreboding signs of burnout are all around campus, from the twitching eyes of over-caffeination to jokes about leaving sleep for the dead. Our bodies will keep count for our actions, just as our calendars bear the weight of each event. Why do we work so tirelessly and deny ourselves rest?

Our Identity Crisis

During orientation week at Cornell, I constantly played the introductions game—the classic exchange of names, majors, hometowns, and hobbies. What struck me as odd was that none of these conversations told me anything about anyone. Nor did others learn about my beliefs and perspectives on the world; I only learned what they did, not who they were. Even the simple act of introductions encourages us to share our identities as the things that we do. There has to be a better way to identify ourselves, other than just by our works.

As I sit on campus and watch as people run about and coffee chat to no avail, I am reminded of Ecclesiastes. In this book of the Bible, a teacher tries to find his purpose in life by discovering everything the world has to offer. The teacher denies himself no earthly pleasure. From wealth to wisdom, from property to popularity, he indulges himself to find his reason for existence. He finds, in the end, that everything is meaningless. The pleasure of drinking is fleeting; the satisfaction in hard work is demystified by the fact that he has to leave it all behind when he dies. In Ecclesiastes 2:10 he remarks, “But as I looked at everything I had worked so hard to accomplish, it was all so meaningless—like chasing the wind. There was nothing really worthwhile anywhere.” [3] A man who denied himself no pleasure still lacked something. He had every opportunity in his grasp. Neither work nor rest sustained the longing of his soul. His identity was not rooted in something bigger than himself, so he found that all his work was futile. 

How often do we try to create our meaning? I see it all the time, everywhere on campus. Students are rushing around trying to prove their worth, but in the end, it’s all futile. We are searching for a purpose that only God can reveal to us.

God designed us intricately and even knows the number of hairs on our head, so why would we disregard His knowledge and ability to fulfill our deepest desires? [4] We guard our insecurities and try to fix them on our own. We are like Jacob, who, in Genesis, deceives his father to inherit a blessing that belonged to his older brother Esau. The desire for control and the fear of not being worthy enough pushed Jacob to guard his insecurities with a false identity.

Initially, after securing his brother’s inheritance, Jacob prospered and went off to another town to marry and create a new life. But then guilt began to eat away at him. He feared that his brother would fight him when he returned home. To appease his brother, he sent luxurious gifts that prevented a fight but did not solve Jacob’s identity insecurities.

When Jacob journeyed home, God wrestled with him in the form of a man. God knew that Jacob was still struggling with reliance on his own strength and his worth. Jacob was so determined to have his way that God had to wrestle him until his hip was forced out of its socket! Even after this injury, Jacob still fought and said, “I will not let you go until you bless me.” [5] He was still solely motivated by receiving a blessing. Not until he looked at God face-to-face was he able to realize that his identity needed to be rooted in God alone, not in anything he could accomplish on his own. God loved Jacob too much to let him live a life with a false identity rooted apart from Himself. It was only once Jacob realized this that he received God’s blessing.

Jacob was like many of us: stubborn and insecure. He was insecure in his identity, so he tried to forge his own destiny by taking his brother’s inheritance. Now, I’m not trying to say that any of us will use identity theft to steal a sibling’s birthright (as Dwight from the Office puts it, “Identity theft is not a joke!”). [6] We, too, try to create our own destinies that are driven by our insecurities. We often try to evade our deepest insecurities through distraction and busyness that feed into false identities. But God loves us too much to let us keep living burnout lives. He gives each of us purpose and blessing.

In Ecclesiastes, we learned that work without God is meaningless. In Jacob’s story, we can see that creating a false identity robs us of our true identity as children of God. How does the futility of work play into our identities as children of God?

Designed for Rest

Humans are not designed to stay awake into the wee hours of the morning and then turn around to wake up at the crack of dawn, though college students’ sleep schedules—or lack thereof—might suggest otherwise. A study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that “73% of students exhibited some form of sleep problem.” The study also confirmed the conventional wisdom that poor sleep leads to poor academic performance. [7] Why then do we sacrifice sleep to succeed when evidence shows that this does not work? If we are going to live as children of God, we must learn that we are designed for rest.

Put your Google Calendar aside for a moment and breathe into the presence of God. Psalm 127:2 says, “It is useless for you to work so hard from early morning until late at night, anxiously working for food to eat: for God gives rest to his loved ones.” If we fully inhabit our identities as children of God, we are called to rest.

What does it mean to rest? Sleep immediately comes to mind when thinking of rest. Daylight serves as a signal to wake and work, and nightfall is a time to unwind and sleep. There is a clear division between work and rest. But our bodies cry out for more than mere physical rest. Sleep only serves to give the body a break. The mind needs rest too. Cornell’s Community Restoration Day shows that rest is about more than just the body. Rest is essential to ease our minds in overwhelming circumstances. Cornell set aside a day to rest this semester only when the situation became dire. Rest should not be a sporadic act caused by desperation, but should be a regular act of centering.

A routine opportunity for mindful rest is given to us by God through the Sabbath day. Exodus 20:9-10 explains why God created the Sabbath, “You have six days each week for your ordinary work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedication to the Lord your God.” [8] The Sabbath Day was created to honor the Lord and because God knows that without a structure for rest, many of us will not do it. In Maya Angelou’s book, Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now, she explains the importance of observing a day of rest. 

“Every person needs to take one day away. A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future. Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence. Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for. Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.” [9]

Taking a day off can feel like wasted time, but it is necessary to produce great work. At Cornell, it is exceptionally easy to devalue rest and, instead, emphasize our ability to work ceaselessly. This inability to rest demonstrates an inflated view of the self. By resting, we make a declaration that our identities are not fully rooted in our ability to do work.

Our lives should be set apart if we are fully living in our identities as Christians. Acknowledging our need for rest is not a defeat but rather a surrender to God’s will. Our health depends on our ability to rest. Many of us do not know how to live a fulfilled life because we have overfilled lives. We do not know how to feast because we do not fast and in the same way we do not know how to live because we do not rest. We can find more satisfaction in our work by spending a day apart from it. Each time we choose to rest, we are giving ourselves a larger capacity for joy.

Though taking time to rest, especially through observing the Sabbath, has the opportunity for great joy, it will take a great deal of effort to resist modern-day culture. The workflow at Cornell stands as a testament to the idea that we are productivity machines, and this mentality leads us to tie our identities to our work. But there is a way to resist: We can reclaim our identities as children of God who deserve rest. Rest is an act of defiance.

This article appeared in Claritas’ fall 2023 Stages Issue

Sources

[1] Angela Bunay, “College of Engineering Reduces Credit Limit, Citing Mental Health Concerns.” Cornell Daily Sun. March 17, 2022

[2] Maria Carrasco, “Cornell Lowers Credit Cap for Engineers.” Inside Higher Ed. March 21, 2022

[3] Ecclesiastes 2:10 (NLT)

[4] Matthew 10:30 (NLT)

[5] Genesis 32:26 (NLT)

[6] Greene, Andy. 2020. The Office. Season 3, Episode 21, “Product Recall.” New York: Dutton.

[7] “Psychosocial Correlates of Insomnia among College Students,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, September 15, 2022, https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2022/22_0060.htm#:~:text=with%20mental%20illnesses.-,Introduction,sleep%20per%20night%20(2).

[8] Exodus 20:9-10 (NLT)

[9] Maya Angelou, Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey. NY: Bantam Books 1993