Now that we are nearing the end of second year, the feeling of burn out and fatigue is real. I don’t know about any else but I am mentally exhausted from the year we’ve had, it seems like I could never catch a break and have been thinking about teeth 24/7. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m as passionate about teeth as the next oral health therapist besides me, but it seems this year I’m been exclusively eating, sleeping and breathing teeth. And for a while that drove me crazy! I had recurrent nightmares about teeth ranging from me having stage 4 grade c perio, to having nubs as teeth. So naturally, I developed a strong sense of burn out and fatigue towards this course which made it hard for me to put in even the tiniest amounts of effort. With this whole course basically being online too, meant I had to be the sole motivator of my learning which made it even more difficult to keep atop of my learning. But, eventually, enough was enough and I could not sit back and watch the number of missed lectures grow exponentially, so I got to work. I deleted all my most used social medias (instagram and Tik Tok) so I could not mindlessly procrastinate on them and picked up some new hobbies of reading, learning the electric guitar and fish keeping. I made sure to stick to work hours of studying from 9-5 with minimal work related to school after those hours because I wanted to use that time to focus on my new found hobbies. Now, I wouldn’t say I’ve completely escaped my burn out, but at least I’m not having nightmares about teeth anymore. Also, I’m finding a bit more motivation to get back into work and have not been finding it as hard to put in effort towards my learning. But in saying all that…I am so flipping excited for the end of this year and for an actual (hopefully) 2 month long break. Because it is very much needed!!