One of the other factors that makes the transition from college student to young professional difficult is the fact that there are no more extended breaks that clearly separate stages like with most of your academic career.
Think about it. In college you just have to make it through fifteen weeks of the semester before getting a month off. If things get tough during that time with course work, finances, or your personal life you can still count down the days until the end of the semester.
Looking back all the way to your grade school days every kid counted down the days until summer starting with the first day of the 180 day school year. In between that 180 day school year we would break it down even further counting down the days until fall break, thanksgiving, winter break, and spring break which would help us psychologically cope with being contained in a classroom against our will.
After college graduation you may take a few months off if you have a job lined up, and then you start working. Then you keep working, working, and working and start to realize that aside from the paid time off days that you take advantage of there is no more big deadline or break until your retirement which is roughly 45 years off in the future. After having multiple mini-breaks each of your 16+ academic years including a large three month summer break, you are put in a situation where you only get to look forward to a vacation or two a year on top of days off here and there.
When things get rough at work with periods where projects get extremely hectic, it's tough to keep going and stick with it when you can't say to yourself, Oh well, it will all be over in a few weeks and then I will have three months of nothing. I've actually heard people of different ages say that they expect to burn out in a few months or a few years because it's near impossible for someone to remain efficient and productive for the periods of time that some are working. You're expected to remain competitive in your performance at the office, so people feel pressured to work these crazy hours week after week even though they are also being told to take advantage of the time off (Catch-22, double-edged sword, whatever). You learn to ride out the waves of good and bad times at the office, but the system could use some work.
The competitive line is thin in most industries, and with the dizzying pace of business brought on by the information age a half century ago most managers cannot afford to give their employees extended time off to recharge and get back to neutral. Wouldn't it be great if you had the last two weeks of December off, and two weeks off in the summer on top of your alloted paid time off days? If there was a corporate word or slogan to encompass this idea it would be called burnout prevention planning.
Bottom line, when you start working you will put a lot of pressure on yourself to perform at a high level, but sustaining that level of output with no "real" end in sight is impossible. Work at a steady pace and set realistic deadlines to give yourself the opportunity to be quasi-content, and to not get frustrated and quit, switch companies, and start the process over again.
