The glorification of burnout and how it’s slowly crippling us

By Kaï Abou Karam

In IB1, my English teacher assigned us to write a speech about an issue we personally care about, modeled after Michelle Obama’s rhetorical style. The task required us to choose a topic that matters to our generation and craft a speech that blends personal storytelling with emotional effect, direct audience address, and a strong call to action.

This speech was my response. Although it began as a school assignment, my teacher encouraged me to publish it because its message speaks to something far larger than a classroom task. Burnout, stress, and emotional exhaustion have become defining experiences for students everywhere, especially those in demanding programs like the IB.

I wrote this hoping that even one person might feel seen, understood, or less alone.

(Speech delivered by Kaï Abou Karam in 2035 at the university of Alaska (the most emotionally crippled state, statistically) during mental health awareness week, in response to the state’s alarming rise in teen suicides, depression, and anxiety.)

The glorification of burnout and how it’s slowly crippling us

How are you all holding up? Tired? Stressed? Confused? Yeah well, me too. Everywhere I go, classrooms, cafeterias, group chats, tiktok, I see a repeating pattern of young, talented, brilliant students being stripped of their passion due to societal pressure, overworking, or even their own families. Somehow, we’ve learned to call this slow, quiet burnout “dedication”, as if going through a living death is just a “part of growing up”. We’ve started perceiving burnout as if it’s a badge of honor, instead of what it really is: lost potential buried behind tired eyes. I’m sure you’ve all heard the phrase “you’ll get through it” and “it’s fine just get through high school and everything will be okay”. I always thought these “reassuring” phrases were far from helpful. To me, they’re basically a nicer way of saying “just shut the hell up and take it”. Like, since when has “I only slept 3 hours” and “I’m running on coffee 24/7” become something to be proud of? We’ve blurred the lines between exhaustion and achievement, is a huge contributor to the countless teen suicides, as well as the rising depression and anxiety rates.

Believe me, I’ve lived through just as many if not more breakdowns, burnouts, and overall crash outs than you can even imagine. I used to be in the IB diploma program, a rigorous program with constant deadlines, projects, assignments… You name it. IB has it. High school is hard enough as it is, it is a transformational period that shapes us into who we really are. The last thing I needed was all the pressure and deadlines piled up on top of that. Anyway, I was a very high achieving student, with high expectations for myself. I thought that if I just kept going, if I kept raising the bar higher and higher, if I kept checking boxes and hitting every deadline, I’d feel proud of myself. I’d feel fulfilled. But the truth is, the more I pushed myself, the more I felt like I was losing myself. The work got done, but I didn’t even recognize the person doing it. I stopped enjoying the things I used to love. Piano felt like a chore. Volleyball felt like just another obligation rather than the distraction it once was. Even the people around me felt distant, I was surrounded by people but felt… alone, isolated, detached. These feelings emerged not because these people changed, but because I was too mentally drained to show up for them like I once did.

That’s the thing burnout takes from you, it’s not just your energy. It steals your joy, your creativity, your spark. And the worst part is, it makes you think that it’s normal. It’s normal to lose your love for life. It’s normal to have every bit of passion, joy, ambition get sucked out of you. It’s normal to feel empty. Well I’m here to tell you that it’s not. All of this bullshit that burnout makes you believe? I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to accept it. You don’t have to suppress yourself to survive. You are not lazy, or weak, or dramatic for feeling overwhelmed. Your feelings are valid, goddamnit! You are human! Being human means needing rest, needing space to breathe, needing to live, not just survive. Burnout isn’t proof that you’re not doing enough, it’s a warning that something isn’t right. And maybe it’s time we stop glorifying pain and honoring balance instead. Being numb should not be “just a part of growing up” or “just a part of adolescence”. It is a real issue that we are not only normalizing, but even valuing.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

We have to stop pretending that pain equals hard work. Real work isn’t about destroying yourself, it’s quite the opposite actually. It’s all about building yourself, your knowledge, your ambition. It’s about knowing when to rest. It’s about understanding yourself and the people around you and living a more fulfilling life. And most of all, it’s about preserving your passion, not grinding it to dust.

So maybe, it’s time that we finally shift the narrative. Maybe it’s time we start choosing us, not the grades, not the deadlines, not the endless work, but our peace, our passion, our joy. Because at the end of the day, we are more than our GPAs, our test scores, or how many hours of sleep we lost to finish that damn assignment. We are people. We were put on this earth to live, connect, and inspire. People should be allowed to rest. People should be allowed to live. So if no one’s told you this before, let me be the first: you deserve to feel alive again. You deserve to breathe without guilt. You deserve to feel excited about life again, like you once did as a child, before our education system and societal structure engulfed you into the endless work cycle we call “real life”.

So let this be the moment you stop surviving and start living, because you were never meant to be a machine, you were meant to be human.