Dear Diary,
Yet another week was over before I know it. It was quite a hectic one. I noticed that I was not able to make a few deadlines at work, which meant I had to work overtime (again). Because of that, I also got in trouble with all of the school deadlines. I couldn’t take the pressure anymore, so I ended up crying in the middle of a group meeting. I then decided it was time to ask my colleagues for help, so I wouldn’t have to let my group at university down.
I asked my colleagues for help, and they did help me in the end, but I could sense that they felt that I am weak for the asking. They looked at me judgingly, and I even overheard two of them talk in the cafeteria about me. Since I was already on the verge of a breakdown, I started crying again and had another panic attack. It was horrible. This was a few days ago, and I am still shaken up about it. I feel embarrassed that I had to ask for help, but I really did not see any other way I could do it. I feel like a failure. I should’ve been able to handle the assignments at work and university, but I didn’t. I will try to work even harder from now on to make sure this does not happen again.
I am struggling to keep my eyes open, so I am going to call it a night. Good night.
This week’s diary is mostly based on information found in interviews conducted for the written paper. It is about not feeling like you can ask for help, and like failure is not an option.
Psychologist Launspach wrote a book about working with millennials because he noticed that the number of burnouts within millennials was increasing. In his book, he explains that millennials grew up with the idea that ‘anything is possible, as long as you do your best.’ This also includes the expectation that you have to do something special to be worthy as a human being. He states that because of that, millennials have incredibly high expectations of their work life.
He acknowledges that having ambitions is not a bad thing, but it is wrong when it turns into feeling like a failure whenever you do not succeed in everything. This also created an environment in which it is frowned upon when you ask for help. Unlike the millennial and generation Z, generation X was raised by baby boomers with the ideas’ work hard, do your best, listen well, and work doesn’t always have to be fun’. But Generations Y and Z have learned; ‘enjoy your life, do something you like, always give a 100% and see the world’. That is an ideal that no one can live up to.
An interviewee shared that her burnout mostly happened because she was trying to do too much without help. She said that it was the stress of really having to graduate and maintain a functional status at her job. She did not want to create even more student debt that she already had, so that put her in the position that it was mandatory that she would graduate that year and keep working. It created a stressful situation in which failure was not an option for her. It was not necessarily that anyone else was putting this pressure on her; her financial situation was what caused this tension. Many interviewees also stated that financial and social pressure often causes them to work too hard or too much.
