The Burnout
Sunrise Over Scotland
This post was originally published April 12, 2018.
“Don’t try to go everywhere as soon as you get there.”
Everyone at every study abroad meeting told me this. They said: “I did, and it was a mistake,” “It wore me out,” and “It was too much.” The words “pace yourself” were said as much as “homesickness” and “student visa,” but unlike the last two, pacing yourself while studying abroad was far less likely to become a reality. I told my friend before she left to study abroad this past semester that she was going to experience a rush in the beginning, a need to immediately venture to all the places there are to see. Even though she had the ability to not do this, even though she probably should not do this, she would.
This is how studying abroad goes: Once you arrive at a foreign place surrounded by people your age, you start to get invitations. Invitations to do things, to go places. You say yes because you are well aware that you will be staying in this foreign place for 4, 5, maybe more months and having some friends to spend it with would be preferable. You spend the few weeks, maybe more if you have a good immune system and a lot of stamina, bouncing around from place to place. You will enjoy it--these new people you have not gotten sick of and the new places you have not seen the faults of yet. Then it will come. The Burnout.
“The Burnout” is when you have traveled so much you become sick of travelling.
In my case, I literally became sick. In the beginning, it was a sniffle that I was prepared to crush with an iron fist filled with tea and Sudafed, but it spiraled out of control and deep into my lungs. My body was done. I spent the entire month hacking, wheezing, not going anywhere but the grocery store to pick up a knock off brand of Theraflu and caffeinated coughing pills because those were the only ones that seemed to work. I laid awake on my lumpy mattress, watching reality television, emailing my mother about how angry I was that I couldn’t find chicken noodle soup on any store shelf. I had never missed home so much.
My sickness forced me into a traveling hiatus, excluding only my class field trips. Gone were my attempts to travel to Northern Ireland. Spoiled was my planned trip to the Ring of Kerry, where my friends held cute, little lambs and participated in Irish jigs. Instead I was on my fourth consecutive season of Survivor, eating bread straight out of the bag. But from my bedridden vantage point, I realized I was not the only one experiencing drastic change.
Me Writing on Filoppapou Hill
As other people began to taste the embers of the Burnout, I was an innocent, isolated witness to the pitfalls of social dissatisfaction with close travelling companions and physical exhaustion from the stress of surviving alone in a foreign land. Though I continued to remain in good graces with everyone I knew, I made the decision to completely alter my spring break plans.
I declined invitations to Switzerland, Amsterdam, and Italy. Instead, I paced myself in the only way I could, by choosing to travel alone. I resolved that no place was worth going to, if I couldn’t enjoy it. I traveled for 2 weeks, and spent 5 of those days by myself. I revisited places in Athens while omitting others, I wandered endlessly, and I spent an entire day sitting between the trees on Filopappou Hill writing. I was aware that Greece would overwhelm me with emotion, and whatever that emotion was, I had to give myself time with it. I returned to Cork immediately after Athens, meeting other people who were exhausted, lamenting their decisions to squeeze in one more trip during their break. I did not go to as many places as some people when they study abroad, but each place I went to, I knew intimately like a Sapphic love poem, passionate and elusive, at the cusp of a burnout.