Burn-Out Period

Excuse my lack of updates. It seems I have been distracted from the distractions that distract (ie, this blog). I am trudging through what I call my Burn-Out Period, so please understand that my grammar may seem awkward and incorrect, my thoughts and rantings incoherent, and my sentences that are not parallel. Tenses nonexistent. Sentence Fragments that are not correct because they are dependent clauses.

*Ahem.*

So anyway, apart from utilising grammar incorrectly, I’m in my occasional burn-out period (I’m also rather repetitive, n’est pas?). This occurs every 6-10 weeks, and is usually characterised by moments of sleeplessness, lethargy, spacing-outness (uh, for lack of a better term), and chronic fatigue. Which is not to say that the entire year is like this (which might seem that way given the fact that we IB Students experience symptoms like these throughout the year). There is a subtle distinction between usual IB Life and Burn-Out Period (BOP). Let me explain.

In normal IB Life (which is about as normal as IB Student is), sleep deprivation is a competitive feature. The less sleep you get, the more hardcore an IB Student you are. IB Student regularly competes with their friends on the subject of sleep deprivation (or more accurately, the absence of sleep altogether). You are stressed out but coping adequately enough with the stress. That is, if you have 9 hours of homework to look forward to (yeah right), you will not be too overwhelmed with the workload. For example, if IB Student was to have an IB Commentary due the day after it is assigned, (alot of/85 problems for) IB HL Math homework due the next day, 2 IB SL Chemistry labs due on the same day as the Commentary is due, and an exam to sit through (also on the same day), they are not really overwhelmed by these…encumbrances (for lack of a better term, sorry).

In the BOP, even if you deliberately made time for sleep (at night, duh), you cannot easily fall asleep as your Circadian Rhythm is so screwed up that you think night is day, and day is night. Staying awake in classes is about as useful as studying for IB tests during BOP. You fail either way. In order to stay awake, you must exert a tremendous amount of effort and energy. In order to pass an exam, you must be awake and alert to those annoyingly verbose IB Questions. “Blah blah blah standard enthalpy changes of reaction blah blah blah *sophisticated version of a commonly used unit here* blah blah blah delta H = delta H – T delta S blah *hefty but useless paragraph here* blah blah.” That is all I take in during BOP. For the more motivated IB Student, the BOP is a deviation from how they normally are (procrastinating, but still effective in completing homework, miraculously enough). During BOP, IB Student is not doing any homework at all and–gasp–is not completely concerned with what this lethargy may entail.

My point is that in normal IB Life, IB Student has an adequate level of functioning, while in BOP, IB Student has no level of functioning to speak of at all.

If you excuse me, I have a paper to procrastinate on, a design lab to pretend I started on, and grammar to correct (though not from this post).