Many secondary students are struggling under the weight of looming deadlines with the end of semester fast approaching. This is an issue that appears every semester as more stress is piled on with each assignment.

According to an article on promoting student mental health by University Canada on May 15, 2025, 32 per cent of students rate their mental health as either “poor” or “very poor” with around 70 per cent of students say their academic performance suffered due to their mental health.

Jane Wherry, an academic strategist with Student Learning Services at Lethbridge Polytechnic, says burn out can get to a point where a student start feeling like they can’t continue.

“You can tell the student is heading towards burnout,” says Wherry. She says it starts when they feel overwhelmed, have projects piling up or are struggling to complete assignments on time.

Wherry has students coming in saying they have an assignment due last week and haven’t finished it or they feel like they need to drop a course to make things more manageable. Most of the burn out Wherry sees shows up around midterms or when a bunch of assignments are due around the same time.

Most of the people coming into the Student Learning Services are considering dropping out of a program or looking to take a longer period of time to complete their course she adds. “A lot of it is just keeping on top of the workload,” says Wherry.

Learning time management skills and blocking off time to work on projects instead of pushing it off because they still have a week too finish it can help prevent student burnout from becoming to much.

“It’s just that task initiation of getting started early,” says Wherry.

For Teagan Westling, a massage therapy student at Lethbridge Polytechnic, student burnout has affected his schooling due to not being able to focus on class or get a proper sleep some nights.

“I haven’t really found a way to manage it,” Westling says, instead choosing to power through the best he can while keeping on top of classes.

Westling has tried different services before, such as workshops or tutoring for his procrastination and not pushing things off until the last minute. He says it was a good experience and he learned some helpful tips that he still uses for assignment.

One of the main topics they covered was compartmentalizing and doing things in bursts rather then doing the hardest topic immediately. While it helped in some ways for Westling, he says there’s only so much they can do.

Wherry says both Student Learning Services and Wellness Services are there to help students who need it and are connected to many other resources around the polytechnic. She recommends students to reach out and ask for the help they need, whether it’s about writing a paper, trying to figure out how to read an academic article or if they’re having a hard time understanding science concepts. Student Learning Services is there to help and work through it with students.

“We’ve got your back,” Wherry says. She says they have academic strategist who in specialize in many different topics to help anyone who comes through their doors.