Word: burnout
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Once, hardly anyone except a Graham Greene character could manage such Gethsemanes of exhaustion. Today, burnout is a syndrome verging on a trend. The smell of psychological wiring on fire is everywhere. The air-traffic controllers left their jobs in part, they said, because the daily tension tended to scorch out their circuits (the primitive "flee-or-fight" reaction to danger squirted charges of adrenaline into bodies that had to remain relatively immobile, tethered by duty to scope and computer...
...Burnout runs through the teaching profession like Asian flu-possibly because it depresses people to be physically assaulted by those they are trying to civilize. Two years ago, Willard McGuire, president of the National Education Association, said that burnout among teachers "threatens to reach hurricane force if it isn't checked soon." Social workers and nurses burn out from too much association with hopelessness. Police officers burn out. Professional athletes burn out. Students burn out. Executives burn out. Housewives burn out. And, as every parent knows, there usually comes a moment in late afternoon when baby burnout occurs...
...biggest difficulties with the concept of burnout is that it has become faddish and indiscriminate, an item of psychobabble, the psychic equivalent, in its ubiquitousness, of jogging. Burnout has no formal psychiatric status. Many psychoanalysts regard the malady as simply that old familiar ache, depression. Even so, plenty of professionals take burnout seriously. Psychological journals are heavy with analyses of burnout...
...became involved in peace work. "I did a 72-hour vigil and fast with Mobilization for Survival at Faneuil Hall, and that was an introduction to a tradition of opposition to nuclear weapons. That really led me in another direction." The intensity of his involvement also introduced him to "burnout" by the middle of his sophomore year. "I started realizing that from seven in the morning until one the next morning (I was) spending most of my time calling people or going to meetings or working out at the jail. Studies got squeezed in. I couldn't continue that...
...Teacher burnout" indeed. What American education needs is more grit and determination and less weeping and wailing. Too many teachers have been coddled too long. Test every one of them. They should either measure up or flunk right out of the classroom...