Heather Holleman,
Professor of English,
Penn State University
[March 25, 2013]—
Every spring, I suffer from the classic symptoms of “burnout.” After a long academic year of lesson plans, grading, and office hours, I’m tired. Teaching and writing become drudgery. I’m impatient with students. I can’t wait to get away from campus. I lose the joy in teaching. The very thing I love most in my field returns to me hollow and empty. My work loses its meaning.
Have you ever felt this way?
The irony of this season of burnout is that I’m leading a seminar for instructors on how to handle burnout this week, and I’m burned out myself. I’m thankful for Parker Palmer’s quote that “we teach what we most need to learn.”
As I pray about how to heal, the Lord’s shown me more of the why behind burnout. In particular, I’m exploring whether the energy I find in teaching, writing, and evangelism comes from Spirit-filled living or instead from a desire to feel important, special, and loved.
If I’m working hard to make a name for myself and to have others praise me, then that’s a recipe for burnout.
If I’m writing and performing in order to be seen and known, then God is too gracious and loving to let this succeed. Often, the rewards for academic work include praise from students and colleagues, but what happens when even the best compliments no longer satisfy?
Work, motivated by anything other than loving God and allowing Him to love others through me, is less and less meaningful to me. I face this lesson every year, and it keeps returning to haunt me. God asks me why I’m doing what I’m doing. The answers aren’t quite right yet.
I want to teach, write, and proclaim Christ to my students and colleagues because I’m abiding and overflowing and bearing much fruit (John 15). But I often do these things for self-promotion instead (Philippians 2). I’m really loving myself. Even the way I love Jesus becomes more about loving myself and seeking His blessing and provision for my life and work.
This reveals to me the source of my burnout: I’m seeking energy and joy where it should not—and ultimately cannot—be found. I’m filled with selfish ambition that needs a fresh infusion of gospel healing.
I once wrote a poem about the silver minnows in the Potomac River in my backyard in Virginia. The silver minnows would be stranded in evaporating pools as the tide quickly raced out. They’d flop about, shimmering in the sunlight, awaiting the tide’s return. I worried over them; they’d surely suffocate, their gasping gills slowly drying out. Watching them, I knew with crystal clarity what the minnow needed most. It wasn’t to be on display with the bright sun illuminating those silver scales. It wasn’t to be seen at all. It was to be immersed in that water. That’s what they were made for.
I’d sit on that dock and marvel in fear over those minnows. The tide always returned just in time, and they’d swim, flipping and twisting into the current, as fast as they could. Thinking about burnout this semester, I see myself as a stranded minnow who just needs Living Water again.
(c)Heather Holleman 2013