Ah, senioritis - the all too familiar disease that cripples most seniors across the country. I experienced this plague once before when I was a senior in high school, but, to be honest, after being bed-ridden with my current lapse of senioritis, the high school strain pales in comparison.
Firstly, I'm 21, which of course grants me access to as much alcohol as I can handle on a single night. Second, I have hours of free time everyday. And, as I think we can all attest to, once you start watching Law and Order, you're doomed to watch all 100 consecutive episodes no matter how much reading or studying you have to do. These factors all seem to spell disaster for me, an unsuspecting and na've senior.
It's interesting to step back and examine the phenomenon that can be the cause of numerous good times with your friends, but also disastrous consequences for your grades. You and all of your senior friends can sleep for 12 hours a day, drink yourself stupid on a Tuesday, watch movies until 4 a.m., and never open the text books you bought, all without blinking an eye.
At one point during the semester, I glanced at a clock while I was on episode three of my Law and Order binge and saw that the clock said it was 5 p.m. I had missed three classes without realizing it and the only reason I remotely cared was because I needed to return a DVD to a friend.
The disease can escalate in severity if, like me, you're not going to grad school right after you graduate. I'm not sure if I'll ever go to graduate school, so who are these grades for? I'm not saying I'll flirt with barely passing my classes (although I can't make any promises), but the paralyzing fear of being laughed at by graduate school admissions people and my competitiveness with my friends have quickly faded since after the beginning of the Spring semester.
So the question after reviewing senioritis is: should I care? Should I be worried that my lack of work ethic and my alcoholic characteristics will violently flow over into my life after college? Will I live in my parent's basement for several years, jobless, wearing the same sweatpants and socks that I arrived home in, and eating an inordinate amount of fast food in a vain attempt to look like my newfound idol, George Costanza? It's certainly a possibility.
But ultimately I think myself and every other senior in the country will have to remember how we managed to shimmy our way into a school like Geneseo. After most of us lazed around and hung out with our friends senior year, we somehow managed to get our collective acts together, move away from home to a foreign environment, and give the professors hell.
There seems to be a panic button that my common sense hits when it realizes that becoming a shiftless lay-about isn't in my best interest. Even now as I write this a part of me is laughing at the notion of failure. "Joe," it says, "are you crazy? You'll land on your feet. Just remember, you HAVE to make more money than your little brother. So get to work, you bum." Work doesn't seem like such a bad idea.