2 JUNE 2016

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MUSIC MAJOR STRESS AND BURNOUT:

CAUSES AND SOLUTIONS

 

 

More information regarding this research, including supporting texts, can be found at http://beckyvena.weebly.com/

 

Abstract

This inquiry-based research essay looks into the topic of stress and burnout among college music students. Particularly, it seeks to answer the question: “What causes musician burnout and how can we recover from it, or, better yet, prevent it altogether?”. The paper defines burnout and explains what can cause it, particularly in the music world. It gives known treatment options for burnout, but seeks to go beyond the usual solutions, even suggesting more institutional changes. This essay also defines the term “metacognition” and discusses what impact it could have on improving students’ abilities to learn and diminishing burnout. A survey was conducted of music students, mostly at the University of Denver, to determine the prevalence of high stress in the field. An interview was also conducted of one undergraduate music student at the University. Finally, as I am a current college music student, observations were done of myself during my studio lessons. This allowed me to somewhat test the ideas I had regarding burnout and metacognition. This essay may be useful for other current music students, but may be essential for music educators, as institutional changes in the field rely on them. They may be interested to see how prevalent high stress is among their students, and may then be able to be even more aware of their students’ well-being. 
Keywords: stress, burnout, music students, metacognition.

Music Major Stress and Burnout: Causes and Solutions

Music is exhausting - I know firsthand. From the endless hours of practice, to the performance anxiety that you never quite get over, stress is almost guaranteed for any musician. But there are particular stresses involved when musicians wish to pursue a degree in the field. Before becoming one of those students myself, I had often heard horror stories of those who were accepted into the best colleges (Juilliard and the like), quit after a year, and never touched their instruments again. But what could cause someone to do this? What could make someone hate doing something they once loved? Matters such as these have led me to research a question consequential to students and professional musicians alike: What causes musician burnout and how can we recover from it, or, better yet, prevent it altogether?

So what is burnout, exactly? The modern online version of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary describes burnout as a state of exhaustion of physical or emotional strength and/or motivation, due to high and prolonged levels of stress (Merriam-Webster’s, 2015). The print version of the Webster’s dictionary from 20 years ago would agree, but gives more hints to what burnout might feel like: “fatigue, frustration, or apathy resulting from prolonged stress, overwork, or intense activity.” (Webster’s, 1996, p. 281). This definition sounds a little less serious - yes, it’s still an unfortunate experience, but fatigue and frustration seem temporary. On the other hand, the Webster’s definition of “burned-out” is a little more concerning: “burned-out: 1) consumed; rendered unserviceable or ineffectual by maximum use; 2) exhausted or made listless through overwork, stress, or intemperance” (Webster’s, 1996, p. 281). Granted, definition 1 is not really meant to describe people; in fact the example given is “a burned-out tube” (Webster’s, 1996, p. 281). But perhaps burnout, though from an outside perspective may seem temporary and surely fixable, actually feels permanent and devastating, more akin to the first definition, to those experiencing it. It may not just be fatigue, frustration, and apathy, but perhaps feels more like an exhaustion that is inescapable, a stress that does not leave the person a little burned, but rather consumed entirely.

This sense of hopelessness is often associated with depression. Besides the risk of developing this, burnout may also be accompanied by feelings of anxiety, depersonalization, lack of accomplishment, and emotional exhaustion (Orzel 2011; Bernard, 2010; Bourg Carter, 2013). These feelings of burnout are said to come about because of significant and prolonged stress, but they may also be due to “a chronic discrepancy between expectations and reality” (Pines, 2013, p. 8). As Jane Christensen elegantly puts it in her article Burning and Burning Out (1981), “If the human soul, alive and growing, is like unto fire, perhaps it is a loss of that fire, in ourselves and our students, that we need to be worried about.” (p. 15).

Feelings of burnout may be common among various fields of work, but the unique stresses of their field may put musicians at an elevated risk. In her book Thinking about Thinking: Metacognition for Music Learning, Carol Benton explains that music is unlike any other one academic subject. She describes the three domains of learning in regards to successfully making music: the cognitive domain, where musicians must develop content knowledge and understanding about their instruments and music; the psychomotor domain, where students must develop an abundance of motor skills and be able to control them to create the sound they want; and the affective domain, where students must develop good taste and a sense of musical expression (Benton, 2014, p. 17). Developing all three of these is hard work and can be particularly frustrating when one area is developing faster than the others. For example, a student may know what a piece is supposed to sound like (a developed affective domain), but their motor skills aren’t advanced enough to play it (an underdeveloped psychomotor domain), which can lead to much frustration and potentially burnout.

The college music world particularly is full of sources of stress, which may include the amount of coursework and time required for a degree (both music-related and general education classes); the amount of practice required; and stressors within music in general, including unrealistic, unclear, or nonexistent goals; feelings of making little improvement, therefore having few or no accomplishments (usually because of a lack of clear goals); performance anxiety; and perfectionism (Orzel, 2011; Bernard, 2010; Wristen, 2013).

In Orzel’s study, 93% of music students felt overburdened with school work. They felt that this left them with little time to get enough sleep, spend time with family/friends, engage in their other hobbies, or have time for a job outside of school (Orzel, 2011). Music students also reported more hours of class per week, and less hours of sleep, exercise, and relaxation than non-music majors (Bernard, 2010). These last three activities are crucial to good physical and mental health. As a student becomes more mentally stressed, they may sacrifice physical needs (sleep and exercise), which makes them physically stressed as well. It is known that a lack of sleep can decrease cognitive function, and feeling physically “bad” can have an effect on mental well-being. Without the time to relax, the student may become increasingly stressed mentally, making them more stressed physically, which makes them even more stressed mentally, and so on as their health continues to decrease. Ultimately, students of any field must overcome these feelings and learn to manage or somehow decrease their stress, as the outside factors, such as the amount of coursework and time required for that work, are unlikely to change significantly.

Another contributing factor to the stress music students feel may be their very personal relationship with the subject. Music students in particular are less able to detach themselves from their work (Wristen, 2013; Spahn, Strukely, & Lehmann, 2004), perhaps because, as Spahn et al. put it, “[m]aking music always came and still comes ‘from the heart’ and is associated with great personal identification." (2004, p. 31). Spahn et al. also discuss that this may cause a narrowing of interest (2004), as music starts to become the center of the student’s life. This would explain why the thought of changing majors after beginning as a musician, or of quitting the instrument entirely, can seem so devastating to students even if they are stressed beyond reason.

Levels of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization do seem to be significantly higher among music majors than in other degrees (Bernard, 2010), and the related symptoms of anxiety and depression are going largely untreated by music majors in particular. In fact, in one study, 79% of music students experiencing psychological problems did not seek professional help (Wristen, 2013). These are all unsettling facts which demand to be dealt with.

There are numerous treatment options for those dealing with burnout, which include getting more and better sleep, eating the right amounts and the right foods, getting regular exercise, setting more reasonable goals, becoming involved in extracurricular activities, spending time socializing and/or in a supportive environment, and seeking professional help or medical treatment (Orzel, 2011; Hamann, 1990; Bourg Carter, 2011; Zimmerman, 2010). However, students may not have the time to do these things, and they may not all be useful options. For example, many music students do not choose their own music or set their own deadlines, lessening the control they have over their own goals. One goal of my research was to find new strategies, including possible institutional changes, that could be more useful and effective in helping students who are struggling with burnout.

My ideas for these types of changes begin with a concept that relates to thought in general rather than music specifically, but that can be applied in almost any scenario: metacognition. This term essentially refers to the act of thinking about thinking, the “awareness or analysis of one’s own learning or thinking processes” (Merriam-Webster’s, 2015). One writer describes it as “the ability to perceive the very steps by which success occurs” (Tinberg, 2015, Section 5.2). I think that understanding this concept could be an essential step toward preventing burnout. By reading more about the topic, I saw the connection between metacognition and improvement, and the more obvious connection between a lack of improvement and frustration / feelings of burnout. Metacognition seems to be the key to effective learning, and, in the musician’s environment, effective instrument practice, a lack of which can be a large source of frustration. Eliminating this frustration could leave music students feeling like they’re learning better, accomplishing more, and are overall less stressed and less likely to become burned-out.

Methods
After doing sufficient background research, I composed an online survey intended for current music majors; the questions are listed in Appendix A. My survey was posted on my personal Facebook account where it was shared by a few people, and was also posted on the “University of Denver Class of 2019” Facebook page. I also sent the link to the survey directly to music majors that I know, and passed it on via email to all the music majors at the University of Denver (DU). I received 44 responses, the majority being students at DU. I then conducted an interview with an undergraduate freshman piano major at DU, whom I will call John. The questions and responses of this interview are listed in Appendix C. Throughout the entire project, I have conducted observations mainly of myself and my studio lessons professor. Being a piano major, I was able to understand from experience what may cause stress, and was also able to see what helped make my own practice more efficient. The field notes from my observations are listed in Appendix C. IRB consent forms are located in Appendix D.

Results
Of the 44 students that responded to the survey, none said they never sacrificed necessities such as sleep, exercise, and proper nutrition in order to get work done. While the majority said they sometimes (the neutral response) sacrificed these necessities, 50% said they do either “often” or “usually”, with just under half of those saying they usually do. This is an alarming finding as sacrificing these necessities exhausts the body, which can magnify already present feelings of burnout.

The majority of the students who “often” or “usually” found themselves sacrificing physical necessities to get work done also felt they didn’t have the time to relax. Surprisingly, there was a somewhat even spread of how often these students felt frustrated with their practice, ranging between 2 and 5 (on a scale of 1 being hardly ever frustrated to 5 being frustrated the majority of the time). However, it should be noted that these students may be not be feeling stress when it comes to their practice, but may be overwhelmed when it comes to the work required for other classes or ensembles, as well as other outside variables. For example, John stated that he was very stressed in high school, but he saw piano as a source of relief and relaxation. A more accurate survey could identify the difference and ask about both frustration related to practice and stress overall/outside of practice. A larger survey would probably also demonstrate a trend between overall levels of stress and how often students sacrifice physical necessities. For example, John does not sacrifice these, and continues to be happy with his degree.

John did not seem to struggle with stress as much as some survey participants indicated they did. While he did say he was often stressed, he said that this did not usually mean that he was unhappy, especially with regards to music. John also mentioned that he makes time to exercise, engage in other hobbies, and relax, and overall tries to be healthier in the way he goes about his work. One survey participant also seldom sacrificed these necessities, and felt only neutral frustration, even stating that he/she “handle[s] stress well whereas others may completely break down.”.

19 students chose to comment at the end of the survey, though 2 responses were omitted because they did not pertain to the topic. Of the 17 relevant comments, 65.71% were negative. The others were not particularly positive except for one, which, among other things, read, “But I love music!”. And music students do love music, many have spent large portions of their life doing it. But as another participant put it, “the amount of busy work for so little credit takes a huge toll on my motivation to actually pursue music”. Music students may be particularly passionate about their degrees compared to other fields because they have already spent so much time doing it, and because of their personal relationship with the subject. This makes it even more unsettling that students who may enjoy music itself so much can become so frustrated with the degree that they drop music entirely.

Perhaps the most startling statistic, though, is that 86.84% of students felt they should be practicing more, regardless of how much they were already practicing. When asked the question, “What do you feel could make your practices more effective?”, 45.5% of students that responded gave answers having to do with wanting to be able to focus better. One student answered “meditation”, which could also be considered a way to improve focus. But of all these students wanting to focus better, only 6.9% listed a lack of focus as something they think causes frustration with their practice. On the other hand, 55.1% said they were frustrated because they were either learning too slowly, feeling like they weren’t making progress, or they didn’t know how to improve.
 

Discussion
John and others handle stress well, but many do not. And for those that do not, burnout can be devastating. Not all students are on the verge of burnout, but many did leave concerning comments at the end of the survey, one asking “Why am I doing this? Is my degree really worth it? Where are the jobs out there?”, and another saying, “I don't know how to prevent it but I am exhausted, mentally unwell, and haven't exercised in weeks.”. These particular comments were both left by students earning master’s degrees. These are students who may have already been pursuing music at a university for 5 or 6 years and are still feeling alarmingly high levels of stress, beyond what is reasonable and healthy. Even after all this time, they have not become “used to” the workload and stress, and are not necessarily better able to deal with it. And for graduate students in particular, with the professional world looming closer than it seems as an undergraduate, answering the question of “why am I doing this?” becomes even more critical.

It seems that many students are stressed beyond what is healthy, even if they aren’t close to burnout. Why do so many musicians skip necessities, and take such little time to relax? One participant gave this response:

My personal feeling is that the expectations for what and how much we music students will sacrifice for our work (sleep, exercise, meals, family time) is unrealistic and unhealthy. I believe there is an attitude in the field that "that's just how it is," and this needs to change for the sake of musicians' health and well being. I believe that extreme perfectionism is at the root of this attitude.

 

This comment was also made by a master’s degree student. I did not look into perfectionism that deeply, but it would be a worthwhile topic to research in conjunction with the subject of burnout. And perhaps this apparent attitude of “that’s just how it is” may be why so few students that are experiencing psychological problems do not seek treatment, as determined in Wristen’s study (2013). For whatever reason, some students may put practice, even ineffective practice, before physical and mental health, only making the stress they might feel worse; this is a problem that must be addressed.

Though I did not ask specifically about metacognition in the survey, the answers I received throughout do support my ideas. Over 50% of students stated that they became frustrated while practicing their instrument because they felt they were learning too slowly / not making enough progress fast enough, or they didn’t know how to improve; but these could all be considered essentially the same source of frustration: not knowing how to improve. A student doesn’t make progress fast enough because they don’t know how to learn better, beyond what they’ve already done. Learning effectively and efficiently would also mean making more progress in a shorter amount of time, and therefore cutting down on the frustration some of these students are feeling.

But how can the problem of students not knowing how to improve be fixed? The key is metacognition. As Tinberg explains when discussing the term, “Performance, however thoughtful, is not the same as awareness of how that performance came to be.” (Tinberg, 2015, Section 5.2). Students must at all times be able to improve and know how to make their performances better. This requires conscious thought, a deliberate search for ways to improve, and a formation of concrete ways to do it. Performing itself requires being able to use the tools at your disposal, but preparing for that performance requires knowing when and why to use them. And as music students know, a degree in performance, or music in general, does not entail that much performing; but rather spending time preparing to perform - learning the music, improving and perfecting until you can play better than your absolute best. Most college-level music students are certainly capable of playing their instruments, they have the tools they need (they know how to hold the instrument, read the music, play the notes, etc.). If they didn’t have these skills, they probably wouldn’t be majoring in music in the first place. But a successful performance comes from successful preparation and improvement. Besides simply being able to play, students must first look for ways to improve, be able to actually recognize those areas when they come across them, and then know how to improve those areas. But of course, if students could do all of this on their own they would already be professionals.

So perhaps instead of taking more breaks, practicing visualization, exercising more often, or performing any of the other individual actions possible to recover from it, burnout could be prevented by developing better metacognitive skills all along. More developed metacognition would mean that students could more easily see where they need to improve, feel they learn better faster, be capable of setting concrete goals and having concrete ways to reach them, and could more clearly see their achievements and feel a sense of accomplishment with each step they make towards their goals.

One way students could improve their metacognition is to have more access to metacognitive skills beyond their own. Take myself, for example. Over spring break, I practiced a two-page passage of a piece I was learning over and over again, trying to perfect it before I moved on to the next sections. I made progress at first, but then I hit a wall. I tried to practice more, but only became more frustrated as the piece was not getting any better. I finally returned to school and had my lesson, where I expressed my concerns to my professor. After playing through what I’d learned, she was immediately able to identify problems with both my playing and my practice. My professor's metacognitive skills are far more developed than my own, and so it was much easier for her to see where I could improve and how, when I could not. And perhaps if I’d had a lesson with her sooner, I could have moved on to new ways of practice and new sections of the piece, and minimized the growing frustration I was feeling over spring break.

Perhaps if students had more private lessons per week, say, two or three instead of just one, they would have this extra access to metacognition beyond their own and may actually be able to make progress faster. They may also begin to more quickly develop better metacognitive skills of their own. It may seem counterintuitive to give students less time to practice between lessons, but perhaps that short amount of time could be more than enough if students’ practices became more efficient because of their better developing metacognitive skills. It would also allow them to become better at managing their time as procrastinating for too long would not be possible. This skill alone would be beneficial to many students - 12.1% mentioned that better time management could make their practices more effective, and another respondent commented at the end of the survey that “time management needs to be at its best”.

Another approach to improving metacognition would be for professors to put more emphasis on analysis of performances. This could be done both in a group and an individual setting. For example, professors could hold group lessons where students comment on each other’s playing and try to determine what exactly was successful or unsuccessful. As for the individual setting, professors could play video or audio clips of performances or just play a piece themselves and have the students try to decide what was right or wrong. If students gave too simple of answers such as, “It just didn’t sound good”, the professor would be there to push them to think harder and get to the root of the problem. Eventually the student would be able to determine exactly what it was that made the performance good or bad, and would be able to take that particular skill and, more importantly, the skill of metacognitive analysis into their own practice and playing. The more students’ metacognition improved, the more efficient their practices could be, saving both their time and sanity, and ultimately diminishing their levels of burnout and decreasing the prevalence of it overall.

Though this study did yield notable results, it could be even more effective in a few ways. A larger survey that also reached students at a more diverse group of schools could show more accurate statistics. I would also create more questions that indirectly asked about metacognition (asking about it without actually saying the word). I would like to interview more people on the topic, especially students who actually did burn out, drop out of music school, or change majors. I would find more ways to conduct observations as well. More research could also be done comparing stress among musicians to that of students in other fields, as well as musicians at a college as opposed to a music conservatory. Besides this, a compelling study could be done looking into the development of metacognition in students of other fields versus musicians. Other research questions could include, “Why are some students better able to handle stress than others”, “Is burnout entirely preventable?”, and “How can students become better learners?”.

It is clear that musicians face unique stressors, some of which may be unavoidable. However, I think stress and burnout is a topic that could use even more research and a serious attempt to change the problems these students face. One graduate student commented that this is just “the way it is” - but it doesn’t have to be. Teaching awareness of the issue, coping skills, time management, and especially helping students develop better metacognitive skills could be essential if music schools wish to attract and maintain students, as well as care for their well-being.

This research has led me to important realizations regarding the high levels of stress among college music students; but more importantly, it has led me to what I think may be good, fresh ideas on how to solve the problem. These ideas must be shared in order to make a change for faculty and students alike, and, in the end, to let music students continue to do what they love doing without having to sacrifice any part of their health.

 

References
Benton, C. W. (2014). Thinking about thinking: Metacognition for music learning. Lanham, MD: R&L Education. Retrieved April 23, 2016, from https://books.google.com/books?id=dT_oAgAAQBAJ&lpg=PR5&dq=improve metacognition music&lr&pg=PR4#v=onepage&q&f=false.

Bernhard, H. C. (2010). A comparison of burnout between undergraduate music and non music majors. Retrieved January, 12.

Bourg Carter, S., Psy.D. (2011, April 17). Overcoming Burnout. Retrieved April 30, 2016, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/high-octane-women/201104/overcoming-burnout

Bourg Carter, S., Psy.D. (2013, November 26). The tell tale signs of burnout… do you have them? Retrieved April 30, 2016, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/high-octane-women/201311/the-tell-tale-signs-burnout-do-you-have-them

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Christensen, J.. (1981). Burning and burnout. The English Journal, 70(4), 13–16. http://doi.org/10.2307/816616

Hamann, D. L.. (1990). Burnout: how to spot it, how to avoid it. Music Educators Journal, 77(2), 30–33. Retrieved from http://0-www.jstor.org.bianca.penlib.du.edu/stable/3397813

Metacognition. (2015). In Merriam-Webster Online, Retrieved May 5, 2016, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/metacognition

Orzel, H. (2011). Undergraduate music student stress and burnout (Order No. 1488146). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (848932801). Retrieved from http://0-search.proquest.com.bianca.penlib.du.edu/docview/848932801?accountid=14608

Pines, A. (2013). Couple burnout: Causes and cures. Routledge.

Spahn, C., Strukely, S., & Lehmann, A.. (2004). Health conditions, attitudes toward study, and attitudes toward health at the beginning of university study: music students in comparison with other student populations. Medical Problems of Performing Artists, 19(1), 2016.

Tinberg, Howard. "5.2 Metacognition is not cognition." Naming what we know: Threshold concepts of writing studies. Ed. Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth A. Wardle. N.p.: Utah State UP, 2015. N. pag. Print.

Wristen, B. G. (2013). Depression and anxiety in university music students. Update: Applications of Research in Music Education, 31(2), 20-27.

 

Zimmerman, E. (2010, January 16). When stress flirts with burnout. The New York Times, p. BU7. Retrieved May 9, 2016, from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/jobs/17career.html