With week 10 and finals fast approaching, I’m sure a lot of us are wishing we had a break right about now. As I am writing this, in the middle of a week of poor sleep, a packed Google Calendar and innumerable cups of coffee, I am visualizing myself at the base of a mountain of assignments that, no matter how hard I try, I will never be able to summit.

I have found myself in this precarious situation not just because I am taking on my first upper-level seminar at Carleton while also trying to run a newspaper for the first time, but also because I have noticed a lot less motivation than I have previously had. I have never been perfect at staying organized, managing my time or closely analyzing all of my class readings, but this term, it’s different. I plan everything at the beginning of the week, yet by Sunday night I don’t get to a good portion of the work I had hoped to complete, and I wallow in disappointment and self-pity rather than accomplishing my goals.

At first, I had chalked it up to being an upperclassman. I have been doing this for six trimesters now, and most of the initial fear I had about how difficult college would be has since passed. Additionally, now that I have officially determined that grad school in STEM is out of the picture, I am a little bit more relaxed about my grades because rabbinical school does not have incredibly strict GPA requirements. But I think it goes deeper than that. It’s not necessarily that I am intimidated into doing work; if that were true, senioritis would have hit me a lot harder in high school.

I had an epiphany about the cause of my junior year autumn slump when I was planning to go home for winter break. I was looking for my flight confirmation email in my inbox, and there it hit me: the last time I was away from Carleton for more than a few days was in March. I had the immense privilege of working on campus this summer, helping with food insecurity response programming. While it was gratifying and mostly enjoyable (apart from weathering some heat waves in Myers), it was exhausting. Working 40 hours a week, most of those on my feet in a kitchen, and working many weekends for an entire summer would have been tiring on its own. But the fact that I did that after a full 10-week Spring Term and moved straight from my summer work to my Peer Leader training to New Student Week to Fall Term with barely any days in between left an impression on me that can’t be out-willed or even out-caffeinated.

I didn’t notice how burnt out I was at the beginning of the term. Though I had been working myself pretty hard over the summer, my hours were flexible and a lack of campus events over the summer gave me a good amount of free time. I was getting decent sleep, had time for my hobbies and I was eating nutritious food because most of my summer job was cooking. Once Fall Term started, everything was turned upside down. At first, I felt ready. The excitement of the new trimester and my friends’ arrival after three long months of not seeing them was motivating. I was mostly able to stay on top of things not only because of the beginning-of-term energy, but also because the first few weeks came with a lighter workload.

My second and third weeks, however, were not without trouble. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur came around, which led to a considerable time commitment, not just because I was observing the holidays, but also because I was helping to lead services. The few weeks following contained Sukkot and Simchat Torah, another two important Jewish holidays. After those were finished, I finally felt like I could breathe, but the end of the High Holidays perfectly coincided with the second half of term, meaning my workload was rapidly increasing. But with more work, I didn’t magically get the motivation to do more. My mind and body simply didn’t let me. I’ve always had a procrastination problem, but my motivation to do anything was nowhere to be found. Taking a break from homework for a day didn’t do much either. By the seventh or eighth week, it was clear that I had officially burnt out.

As I’m rushing through this article in the downtime between two meetings because I have several days’ worth of homework to get done tonight, I recognize that I certainly got myself into this mess. And while I’m at least partially sure that everything will get done if I give these last few weeks everything I’ve got, I’m looking across the horizon to winter break with a bit of a different perspective. I’m viewing winter break as not a gift, but a necessary break. It’s something that, especially after the last eight months, I definitely need.

I know that this is something I have been told ad nauseam by dozens of SWA stall posters and several #CarlTalks, but when adults start lecturing me on the importance of taking breaks, I start to tune it out. But it has become painfully clear over the past few weeks that breaks, including extended breaks, are required for even baseline academic and extracurricular function. While it’s been a tough term, it will make my six weeks of late mornings, abundant fresh fruit and a relatively open schedule all the better.