Second semester rush is self-explanatory to anyone who has ever experienced it. It’s crunch time for high school students before summer break. Some seniors drop out, juniors start to feel a little bored, sophomores hit a slump and freshmen will do anything to finish their assignments early. What causes the second semester rush though and is it more than just a high school experience?
Deep down second semester rush is an adolescent taste test of burn out. Looking at the root cause of burn out, in his article “Why Time Seems to Speed Up as We Start to Get Older Making Sense of the passage of Time,” Steve Taylor said, “As children we have so many new experiences, and so process a massive amount of perceptual information. Children also have an unfiltered and intense perception of the world, which makes their surroundings appear more vivid. However, as we get older, we have progressively fewer new experiences. Equally importantly, our perception of the world becomes more automatic. We grow progressively de-sensitized to our surroundings. As a result, we absorb gradually less information, which means that time passes more quickly. Time is less stretched with information.”
Burn out comes from a foreseeable future obtained by continually living the same regime over a rapid elapse of time, making life seem mundane. By the time second semester has rolled around, the new year new me experience of high school has worn off. People fall into an all too predictable routine, making them susceptible to the burn out epidemic.
Cindy Lustig, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, said, “Our perception of days, weeks, years and that kind of time seems to be especially influenced by our perspective: Are we in the moment experiencing it, or are we looking backward on time?”
The passage of time can be influenced by memory and how much you’ve experienced. For example, for a 90-year-old, a week is a small portion of their time so it seems to go by faster. For a 5-year-old, a week is a big portion of their life and because of its significance on a short timeline and the fact that it’s likely a new experience for someone without many experiences. For those reasons, the time may feel slower and more memorable.
To stop burn out we have to slow time down, not literally, but mentally. The region of the brain that dominates over memories is known as the hippocampus. In order to have a hippocampus at max functionality it needs a few things. An article from Cleveland Clinic said, “Your hippocampus is part of a larger brain structure. Taking care of your overall health helps you take care of your brain. You can protect your brain and make your hippocampus stronger by applying brain health boosters to daily life.
In order to get the most out of the high school experience and life in general it has to be remembered. By applying these simple brain health boosters to daily life it might just be possible to increase neuroplasticity. Burn out is a common experience but that doesn’t make it healthy. When experiences are new and diverse, the brain perceives them as more important and therefore more memorable, that’s how to stop rushing second semester.
