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What is Burnout, and How Can You Manage It?

Image of papers and blue sticky notes with a planner on top. The section of the planner reads "TO DO LIST." In red marker is written "SO MANY THINGS" December 1, 2021

Nikita Thadani

 

You may have heard the phrase “I’m so burnt out” before. You may have said this phrase yourself – before grad school or during. This phrase certainly pops up more frequently around this time of year, with final papers, exams, and deadlines approaching. But what is burnout? There are several definitions of burnout – let’s take a look at a few of them. 

Mirriam-Webster Dictionary defines burnout as “exhaustion of physical or emotional strength or motivation usually as a result of prolonged stress or frustration.”1 The World Health Organization uses the ICD-11 (International Classification of Diseases, 11th edition) definition of burnout, which is “a syndrome conceptualized as …

Finding Mental Health Resources at Mason & Beyond

Image of golden retriever looking happy in the center of the photo. A Mason student petting the dog on the left of the photo, sitting on a green bench and wearing a camo jacket, a paper face mask, and a yellow hijab. On the right, a woman sitting on a green bench, looking straight ahead at the camera, wearing khaki pants, a blue jacket, and a blue polo. November 4, 2021

by Nikita Thadani

As I’m sure many of you already know, prioritizing your mental health in graduate school is key. Although it can be easy to prioritize deadlines, responsibilities, and work over your mental health and well-being, if we don’t take care of our minds and bodies first, we won’t be able to complete all of our many tasks & responsibilities at hand. As they say, you can’t pour from an empty cup (in this case, you are the cup). 

At the Mason Grad Insider, we’ve written plenty of blog posts about self-care (here and here), meditation, well-being, and resilience as a graduate student. But what about when that’s not …

Meal Prepping: An Aspirational Blog Post

December 2, 2020

Hey Mason Grads,

Nikita here. Today I’m going to write a little bit about meal prepping, and let me be very clear with you: this is an aspirational blog post. I am mildly terrible at remembering to meal prep. The hopes are that in writing and publishing this blog post, I’ll hold myself a little more accountable for doing it!

Meal prep is essential for us working adults (as many of us graduate students are), both to bring to our jobs and to those evening classes. Meal prep is great for many reasons–when you meal prep, you’ll be eating more nutritious food, healthier portions, and saving a lot more money …

Practicing Self-Care (Even When It’s Hard)

September 30, 2020

Hey y’all,

So self-care has become a bit of a buzzword recently. But what does self-care actually mean? What does self-care look like for you?

According to Psych Central¹, “Self-care is any activity that we do deliberately in order to take care of our mental, emotional, and physical health.”

Self-care isn’t the same as just treating yourself, as a lot of people in the media may promote. Self-care isn’t always doing what’s easy or being indulgent. For me, practicing self-care means instead of lying in bed and scrolling through Twitter (easy), getting up and going on a run (sometimes hard). It means packing a healthy lunch for the next day …