As the year winds down, senioritis attacks

It's long been that time of year again—the time that seniors look forward to for three-and-a-half years—second semester senior year. If you make it through those years, you will get to experience the most wonderful, relaxing and stress-free time of your entire life. 

Basically, this is the time when you convince yourself that it is alright to skip your classes, stay out drinking all night (and day), and put off your 25-page research paper until the day it's due.  It is a lot like senior year of high school, but with alcohol.

Everyone remembers it—once we got our college acceptance letters, we completely stopped caring about classes, took long lunches and stayed up until 2 a.m.  Now that it is senior year of college, you can still skip classes and take long lunches, but now you plan your study hours around your drinking hours, and go out on a Wednesday despite your 8:30 a.m. class on Thursday. 

Classes are nothing more than an hour-and fifteen-minute slot that keeps you from nursing your hangover or throwing a Frisbee on Neumann lawn.  It's a student’s dream come true and a teacher’s nightmare.  Professors everywhere struggle to find a way to keep senioritis out of their classroom, with tactics ranging from attendance policies to pop quizzes. They don't often succeed, though.

So how is the class of 2010 faring with the end of their senior year? I asked some friends to make sure that my notion of senioritis was correct and still continues to occur.  When asked how her life has changed due to being a second semester senior, Megan Hughes, '10, said, “It's been the most fun. I do the bare minimum that I need to do to get by and spend the rest of the time with my friends.” 

This seems to be the consensus among seniors at St. Joe’s, and probably will be for years to come.  The thing that is important to understand is that this is not just simply a decrease in motivation; it is a lifestyle change. 

Joseph Fluehr, '10, said, “I have been focusing on things that I can only do in college, such as going out on weekdays, sleeping late, lowering my maturity level, and causing shenanigans—with little to no repercussions.”  Senioritis has the power to change people’s lives every year, and this year is no different. 

So, why does this great tradition of apathy continue every year? Senioritis is a celebration and a way to relax.  It is a celebration of the end—the end of high school, or of college. It's the end of another chapter of the proverbial book.  Students quickly realize that the work that they will do will go virtually unseen.  Your college will not revoke their offer, despite what they say, and employers won’t see your eighth semester's grades. 

The college life style and the “real world” are very different (and by very different I mean that one is awesome and one is terrible).  All our lives we hear “enjoy it while it lasts because the real world is not as fun.”  We make sure to do that. We will “enjoy” it for the last five months left and not let anything, even classes, get in the way.   

Having senioritis has made for some of the best times of my life, but that doesn’t mean that it comes without risk. The biggest concern today is the increasing numbers of students with what I call “juvenile senioritis.”  Juvenile senioritis is senioritis of sophomores and juniors. 

Often, students think they run the show and don’t need to go to class or hand in papers on time.  This can be dangerous for many reasons. As a junior, you have half of your college career left and have plenty of time to ruin your GPA, making you nothing more than average when hunting for jobs.

Now that the seniors reading know all the ins and outs of senioritis, take this last week and enjoy the “disease” because, like you will hear 12,000 times at graduation parties, it’s time to enter the real world.  You have one more week of college left—make sure to go out on top. 

In the grand scheme of things, what are you going to look back and remember?  The amazing times you had with your friends in the last week of college, or the discussion on Plato’s views on the existence of God in your third philosophy GER?  You can decide.

Michael Venafra is a senior Decision & System Sciences major and a guest contributor.  He can be reached at thehawk@sju.edu.