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Reading and writing are two of my greatest pleasures in life. It is ironic then that both should be such burdens in the context of education. I am feeling burnt-out.
I want to do all of my assigned reading and writing and to do it all well—I really do—but when my money becomes so tight that my greatest concern in life is raising enough money to be able to pay my rent, keep my utilities turned on, and eat regularly, my stress increases, my happiness decreases, and the additional demands of readings and writings for school merely increase my stress and decrease my happiness. I do not deny the potential for long-term gain from formal education, but my eyes, ears, and mind are already open to the practically infinite worlds of information, perspectives, and possibilities.
Beyond indulging personal interests, satisfying course requirements, and preparing myself for assignments and evaluations, what practical reason is there for me to read tedious textbooks full of dense, semi-random, and largely impractical facts, most of which I will not remember by the end of each reading, even fewer of which I will remember by the time I take an examination, and still fewer of which I will remember by the end of a course? How does that put food on my table?
Writing academic papers is somewhat more practical than reading textbooks in that it allows me to apply both knowledge and abstract thought, improving through exercise my retention of said knowledge, my logical prowess, and my writing skills. Unfortunately, getting to the point of writing requires the completion of tedious reading and either task is nearly impossible for me to complete when my mind is already burdened with thoughts such as how I am going to pay my rent and keep eating regularly.
I wish I could find decent-paying work so I could just work for a while, pay off my student loans, then resume my studies—probably just one class at a time—later when they might seem like more fun and less of a burden.
