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How do you remotivate yourself? I am so burnt out between school, building a Formula car and being in a long distance relationship. I have no will to do anything especially the Formula car. How can I get myself going again?

Buy a new project! In a couple of months the new one will stall out and you'll get back to the old one. It's the only way.

The Formula car is a Formula SAE so it is a school project.

rest, vacation, distraction.

but you'd better do it- burn out is a bitch. I'm over 2 years into mine.

Get a good nights sleep and give yourself a few hours off from everything. When you are feeling rested, grab a piece of paper and write on the top "Things I can do that get my energy up:" Put subheading that says: "In Five Minutes." Then write a list of things that get you engergized that take about five minutes. Examples might be, Listing to a particular song or a quick run or walk. Then create a list for things that take 30 minutes, 2 hours 6 hours, a day, a weekend or a week. Put the list where you can find it easily.

As you are going about your day, if you find that your starting to run down, grab the list. Then take 5 minutes, half hour or whatever you can spare to do something that will get your engergy up. Then dive back into you tasks.

FWIW, you are carrying a heavy load with the three things you mention. I have done all three, but not at the same time.

I just need to make it one more semester. I can't wait to get my bed on Friday so I can actually get some good sleep.

I know how you feel. Part of me wants college to last forever because I'll never have the freedom that I have now... But then the ~70 hour weeks that I'm putting in between studying and classes are killing me. Why did I take 3 math classes this semester?

93EXCivic wrote: How do you remotivate yourself? I am so burnt out between school, building a Formula car and being in a long distance relationship. I have no will to do anything especially the Formula car. How can I get myself going again?

I dunno.... I berkeleying love this E36 M3.

I build a formula hybrid car, and crew for a race team... double racing duty ftw.

Maybe just take it easy and work at the pace you find natural? There are various shades of passion... Maybe yours does not match the level required in designing and building a car every year.

If your not enjoying your hobby, maybe its not the right hobby. This doesn't mean you have to sell all cars and take the bus from now on, perhaps just re-evaluate the focus you place on it? It will come back if its serious.

It isn't that I don't enjoy building and designing the car. That is fun. It is all the bullE36 M3 that goes with it. My school doesn't give two E36 M3s for us and doesn't try to help us out at all. I have beg and pleaded for money. About the only thing, I haven't done is get on my knees if you know what I mean. To make matters worse, despite the fact we are in Huntsville we can't go ask the big aerospace companies for sponsorship so we are stuck trying to find sponsorship with smaller companies and the economy being what it is that is damn near impossible. We are one of the only clubs doing actual engineering and yet we get no money because we aren't space related or some one's pet project. Honestly I just hate my school. The professors are great (for the most part) but the administration is berkeleying retarded and is determined to drag this school in the ground.

93EXCivic wrote: It isn't that I don't enjoy building and designing the car. That is fun. It is all the bullE36 M3 that goes with it. My school doesn't give two E36 M3s for us and doesn't try to help us out at all. I have beg and pleaded for money.

ohh shush.

Our school locked us out of our lab for a few weeks before the start of this quarter because one of the staff injured themselves while trying to move a dolly full of cinder blocks in the dark.

They won't give us a room with electrical good enough to support a welder, we literally welded parts of our frame at a members house. They also wont let us use their welding lab, because it is only for learning.

We have been supplied with 1 manual lathe, 1 manual mill, no tools, no tool storage, and about $700 of funding. (well, we got $5K that was nice... but it was from a separately run student organization.)

Now that we are back into the lab, we have to track down one of 4 professors for access. When that professor goes home, we have to leave.

There are about 4 trailers from abandoned projects/clubs, but we can use any of them because they are being used for storage.

They regularly stick any random project group in our lab, where they take our tools and spread them out through the shop. No one really runs the place so no one is responsible for clean up. Last year they actually loaned our shop to the local high school so they could build a boat.

Everyone deals with it. You still get to hand build one hell of a race car.

In reply to RedS13Coupe:

We have better equipment. But we have the same problem with our machine shop as far as access is almost impossible to work afterhours or on the weekend (after hours is after 4). We also have got less money. Like I said I enjoy the building and design of the car. I just wish I hadn't of taken team lead and stayed chief engineer.

Motorcycle. As a rap song once started 'this should be played loud in a residential area', a snap to 10o ver on the way anywhere will make you giggle. Exercise helps too. I like to combine them with a brisk ride to the gym.

I have been doing the 60-80 hour weeks, 6 and 7 days, huge pay cut and no vacations for 2 years too. Some times you just need to enjoy the little things and not think about the rest.

Let's see... impossible schedule... inadequate resources... enthusiasm-sucking management...

Welcome to engineering.

It sounds to me like your school is preparing you for the real world.

93EXCivic wrote: How do you remotivate yourself? I am so burnt out between school, building a Formula car and being in a long distance relationship. I have no will to do anything especially the Formula car. How can I get myself going again?

Honestly, the best thing I can say is slog through it. Unfortunately, you don't have the choice to take a break from it all (and I don't mean a day, I mean like a week or two) which always does it for me. And your long distance gf would probably dump you if you said "I need a break".

I personally have found I hate school, even though I got a 4.0 in college. I'd much rather be doing other things with my time, so I did a 2 year diploma and got the hell out. You obviously can make it if you've already done 3.5 years!