A bad case of the blahs
I still get freaked out by my 'end of semester blahs'. I'm not sure what it is, but at the end of every semester, I seem to have this period where I don't feel motivated to do much but the bare minimum to get by. Usually this phase lasts between a week or two. Suddenly, one day, I'll decide I need to get a bunch of stuff done...and almost always, it seems to start with a need to do some housework because I've let the housekeeping go during the semester.
After this past fall semester, the recovery period was nearly a month. I think it was the combination of oral exams, 3 classes, teaching 4 labs, and being very sick. I didn't want to be around anyone, talk to anyone, interact with anyone. I just wanted to play computer games when I wasn't doing something vital.
I wish there was a way to prevent this from happening. I suspect the only way is to keep things reasonable during the semester. Even this semester, when I had one class, was sitting in on another, was teaching 3 labs and facilitating for a course, doing research, driving only every other weekend, an amount to do which is rather low compared to previous semesters, I am still fighting the blahs. So apparently I get them after easy semesters, too. (Okay, so the one class nearly killed me...but you know what I mean.) Therefore, my first problem is to ascertain how much is a "reasonable amount"...or get out of academia (into another career which will almost certainly have periods of high need...never mind).
So are you able to prevent the blahs? If so, how do you do it? If not, how do you cope during down time?
After this past fall semester, the recovery period was nearly a month. I think it was the combination of oral exams, 3 classes, teaching 4 labs, and being very sick. I didn't want to be around anyone, talk to anyone, interact with anyone. I just wanted to play computer games when I wasn't doing something vital.
I wish there was a way to prevent this from happening. I suspect the only way is to keep things reasonable during the semester. Even this semester, when I had one class, was sitting in on another, was teaching 3 labs and facilitating for a course, doing research, driving only every other weekend, an amount to do which is rather low compared to previous semesters, I am still fighting the blahs. So apparently I get them after easy semesters, too. (Okay, so the one class nearly killed me...but you know what I mean.) Therefore, my first problem is to ascertain how much is a "reasonable amount"...or get out of academia (into another career which will almost certainly have periods of high need...never mind).
So are you able to prevent the blahs? If so, how do you do it? If not, how do you cope during down time?