Sen-ior-itis: A disease contracted by college seniors (fourth and fifth year.) Symptoms generally occur the semester leading into graduation and include a lack of concentration, boredom, procrastination and being easily distracted by otherwise mundane activities. Highly contagious.
I am a victim of senioritis.
I contracted it pretty early in the semester. During the first day of classes after Christmas, I found myself stunned as to why I woke up early to pick up a syllabus, listen to a professor’s short biography, possibly be threatened by talk of high work-loads and then excused after 20 minutes.
I could have been doing other things, I said to myself. I could have been sleeping, reading the police reports in The Daily, or maybe trying to pick the lock on my roommate’s door with a paper clip. Each seemed like a possible better use of my time.
I noticed the disease pretty early. I admitted I suffered from it in a first day class survey.
I even said senioritis was “treatable” like a cold. Colds are much easier to conquer. They come and go. Senioritis stays with you. It stayed with me. It spread.
Leading up to spring break, I was feeling it pretty intensely. Numerous nights I skipped planned study time to play intramural softball.
Chewing seeds and watching out-of-shape guys lumber around the bases was again a better use of my time. This was me time. School could wait.
I found I was not alone. By the time you’re a senior, you pretty much know what is important and what professors say is important. Quizzes, tests and papers count. Be sure to comb the syllabus carefully, however, and read the fine print.
Social schedules are built around exploiting the syllabus. Test percentages and paper length positively correlate to exactly how much fun you can have. Seniors tend to not only exploit the syllabus, they downright disregard it.
Quiz, tomorrow? Will my employer ever see this? Is it going to further me in life?
The answers to these questions are predetermined and dictate a pretty instantaneous response: “Sure I can go to the Mont!”
Lately, I find my professors to be growing increasingly frustrated with us slacking seniors. We, they say, are supposed to be the leaders of the university. Set the example for the next class. Show them the way to work, right up until the end.
But there’s a problem. The senior class before us never did that. They slacked, wondered aloud the importance of the material. Bad precedent was set. We sheep merely followed.
People say this epidemic has been around for generations. You become complacent, you see too many of the angles. In other words, you know how to play the game. Ironically, instead of taking advantage of the game, we let it lull us into a catatonic state of upside-down priorities.
We are like a seasoned boxer who forgets how to fight in the last round of his last fight. One punch won’t hurt me, he says. Neither will one more. Then you get knocked out.
In this last month of school, senioritis strikes harder than ever.
You start missing class because some cruel roommate just gave you a double-or-nothing bet on a video game you lost for dinner. You play more softball. Karma catches up briefly when you get rocked in the nose with a ball by the third-baseman and you think to yourself that never would have happened if you would have just stayed home and studied.
But you would not have had the fun. And that is the potent ingredient of senioritis.
It is more fun to deny responsibility than to accept it. It is more fun to maximize the last months of social freedom than constrain them with routine. The rest of your life is going to be put on a schedule filled with deadlines, discipline and early-morning cardio.
And for this reason, you delay your search for the cure and let the disease run its course.
-Matt Felty is a public administration senior.
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datboymccoy 3 years, 1 month ago
Is it possible to have senioritis as a sophomore?
JJanowiak 3 years, 1 month ago
Amen.
JJanowiak 3 years, 1 month ago
I was told once that sophomoritis is the opposite of senioritis, where having made it through your first year you start thinking that you know everything.
datboymccoy 3 years, 1 month ago
I know enough to know I know very little