Coping with Stress and Burnout With Ms. Covent

Ridley is a busy place for all, with academics, sports, extracurriculars, and events creating jam-packed schedules. With exams coming up soon, it is critical to know how to cope with stress and burnout and how to reach out for help when needed. After a much-deserved rest during the March Break, we wanted to interview Ms. Covent, the IB coordinator who is well-versed in helping students with stress and burnout, to see how we as Ridleians can end the 2023-24 school year with a bang.

The following is a transcript of an interview with Ms. Covent. It has been edited for clarity and conciseness. 

Rebecca: Hi Ms. Covent! Our piece is going to be about stress and burnout for students. So the first thing that we wanted to ask you about is what is the difference between stress and burnout, how are they related, and how do you tell the difference?

Ms. Covent: Stress is normal. There are always certain levels of stress. We try to take breaks to manage that, but at any given time, there is always a bit of stress, and that is okay. Sometimes feeling a little bit stressed is not a bad thing; it pushes you to be your best and it can help you to be in your best area for growth. If stress pushes too high for too long, people will hit burnout. Burnout and what that might look like will vary from person to person, but often it means you cannot concentrate as well anymore. You are not able to get as much done and you feel less productive. 

When you start getting into burnout, all of your avenues for relaxation, such as working out, that were functional when you were dealing with an appropriate level of stress, do not help very much anymore. You have reached a point where you need a bigger intervention. You may need to seek help from someone if you are going to your workout and all you can think about the entire time is I have these 85 things to do then you are probably moving beyond stress and into the realm of burnout.

Rebecca: Okay, awesome. What are some ways to reduce stress and burnout for students, and what resources are currently available for students seeking help or guidance in managing stress and preventing burnout? 

Ms. Covent: The key thing is to still take those breaks, to still get a workout - this is why Ridley requires that all students participate in sports and do physical activity. Being stressed is okay, but if you are moving into the stage of burnout, then you need an actual bigger rest. And so now it is time to seek some help because you cannot take that extra rest on your own. You cannot just decide not to attend classes, you cannot just decide to take that kind of rest unless it happens to be right before a long weekend. But you can get help from your head of house, your advisor, and again, for full diploma students, you can come to me and we can find ways to alleviate some of those stress points. Depending on where the student is in terms of burnout, we can make bigger or lesser changes.

Rebecca: So what do you think are some common misconceptions on how to deal with stress that you see students doing?

Ms. Covent: Often students make their stress worse, they stay up till the middle of the night and they do not get enough sleep. And then their brains do not work as well as they would if they had gotten enough sleep. They are less productive and get less done, and so the stress magnifies, ending up in more stressful situations. Additionally, students have a hard time, especially in grades 11 and 12, deciding what to put and how much effort into certain assessments. Some assessments do not need as much care and attention as other assessments. If a teacher says an assignment should take you twenty to thirty minutes but you are spending an hour and a half on it, you are creating more stress than you need. At that point, you need to reach out and figure out why. Address the issue around how much work should go into things early, because you are making it worse when you are not doing that. Cutting out sleep, exercise, social activities, and making poor food choices affect your physical health and increase your stress.

Rebecca: So I have been doing a lot of the asking and not a lot of the typing. Rawnie, do you want to take over now? 

Rawnie: Sure, and I think this moves well into our next question. So for students who feel like they do not have the time or ability to deal with stress and burnout, (especially IB students who are really busy and super hectic) what would your recommendation be to them?

Ms. Covent: It is important to schedule your time and to figure out what kind of scheduling works for you. No one method works, but finding the one that works for you is key. The people who are the busiest can juggle more things without ending up with burnout not because they are better, smarter, or more talented in any way, but because they choose how to use their time and balance their time better. Often people will look at those who are very successful at getting a lot of things done and say, “Oh, I can not do that”. But it is not true. Everyone can do that. They just need to learn what method works for them. For some people, it is a checklist or post-its on your computer. Breaking down projects into manageable chunks will also help. Create chunks that can be dealt with in the amount of time you have, because otherwise, you are never getting that feeling of success. That feeling of success will continue to push you through the process.

Rawnie: There has been a lot of stigma in taking the IB as it is very rigorous. What would you say in response to people who think that IB is completely too stressful or that it is too stressful?  

Ms. Covent: I think anyone can do the IB, but it is a choice. You are choosing to have more on your plate in your last two years of high school to be prepared for your first couple of years of university. Most universities are quite happy with the OSSD or the hybrid program from Ridley. You are choosing to challenge yourself academically with IB but everyone can do it. It is just not everyone is going to receive sixes and sevens across the board. You can be successful in the IB with fours across the board. So I think part of the stigma around the IB is the idea that you have to get the IB and get a 38, 39, pushing for marks in the 40s. The reality is our average is in the low 30s and that it has been our average since the IB began at Ridley because we do accept students at all levels. We have students who are pushing for those marks in the 40s but we also have students who are quite happy with marks that take them overall to a mark of the 30s. And those students are very successful and do well in university. I do think that the program prepares students better, but for many students, it is really hard to juggle a lot of sports and the IB, and it is not always impossible. We have had both girls and boys in hockey and rowing over the years who completed the IB and are quite successful. However, that is a choice to be made depending on the time.

Rawnie: Definitely. In your experience, do you think it is effective for IB students to create peer support networks within the program, or would you recommend any ways to do that?

Ms. Covent: I think it is provided that that network is supportive. Sometimes teenagers like to support each other by making fun of each other a little bit, and that has a limit. Sometimes you do not see where that limit is with your friends. And so, if it is all in good fun and the person who is getting picked on a little more than the others is truly having fun with that, it is no problem. However, if there is one person who is not feeling comfortable in that, that peer support group is no longer supportive. And sometimes those support groups are not made entirely of full diploma students. Sometimes the person who is the most supportive of you may be a peer who is not a diploma student. They do not even have to be Ridley students. If you have friends off campus who are supportive of you and will help to push you to be your best, those are the people you need. 

Rawnie: So there is this very fine line between motivation and competition or comparison. How would you recommend students to compare themselves to others?

Ms. Covent: It is hard not to and I get that. But your academic journey needs to be compared against yourself.  If you are comparing your marks to somebody else that tells you nothing about your growth. You need to know how you are growing and in what areas you need to grow. And so when you are comparing yourself to somebody else, that does not tell you very much. Every single person goes into every single assessment with a different history. Even if you are all in the same class and you have the same teacher other factors cannot be compared. What you learned the year before, how you are feeling that day, what is happening in your family, what is happening in your friend group. All of those things play a role in how you did on that assessment. And so when you are comparing yourself to someone else, that is not relevant. I understand wanting to know how you are doing in comparison to others, that is what it is. People have been comparing them for years because they even compared them when I was in school. But you are not marked against your peers, you are marked against a rubric. So seeing your growth on that rubric is really, truly the key.

Thank you so much to Ms. Covent for taking the time to answer these questions with us. To any readers, thank you for reading so far! We hope that you find this interview as helpful as we did and can reflect on how to better cope with stress in the future. ☆