We’ve heard of it before; the dreaded four-syllable word that often spews out of teachers’ mouths while warning us to never catch it. An epidemic that is universally known to high schoolers, parents, alumni, grandparents, bus drivers, etc: senioritis. As second semester looms upon the great horizon, many seniors struggle with their choice, in terms of a Shakespeare pencil pun, “2B or not 2B”. To school or not to school. Do you grab that #2 pencil, head straight for the sharpener and never look back? Or do you drop it on the classroom floor and sprint straight out of school all the way to Chipotle—where your chances of acquiring e. coli are high, but the risk of having any sort of responsibility is second to none.
As with any job or title, many people have ambitions of becoming second-semester seniors, but are unsure of how to approach such a daunting title. How will they ever live up to the name? Here are a few tips to help those with mild to severe senioritis and how they can fully survive the rest of the year without gouging out body parts of themselves or others.
1) Don’t go to class.
50 Cent once said, “I don’t sleep, I might miss the chance to make a dream become a reality”. When you’re a second semester senior, the same logic here can be applied to going to class. Sure, you’ll probably miss a few tests here and there, but now nothing can hold you back from your secret ambitions of becoming an underground rap artist (you can now practice in your basement all day) or finishing an entire stress-relief coloring book. The time to get your priorities straight is now.
2) Start your own company.
Now that you are out from under the control of the tyranny of learning, you can use your time for something really useful. Everyone’s gotta make money, right?
3) Fail your own company.
Oops. It turns out you actually can’t do much with your underground rap skills. At this point, you’re sort of wishing that you were going to class, because nobody cares about your coloring-within-the-lines skills, either. Yet you’re thankful for this long and arduous journey that playing hooky has taken you on, and you’re not quite sure that you’re ready to become a student. But you go back to school anyway.
4) As you return to the drab life of being a student, only go to the classes that really matter.
Balance is not simply a valuable skill in the academic world—it serves as a beautiful asset to anyone’s life, regardless of who they are or what they do. In short, if your senioritis is keeping you from attending that class where you know you’ll rudely be playing Trivia Crack under your desk the whole time anyway, you should still force yourself to take that calculus test. You do want to graduate, right? (If you answered no, repeat step 2).
5) Remember that your time here is temporary.
Whether you cannot wait to get the (expletive) out of here or are clinging onto every single moment like it’s your last, do not simply become a vegetable, barely there in the moment, waiting for the day you can leave. Look inside yourself and try to find the gratitude that comes with difficulty and the joy that comes with struggle.
It will be over before you know it.
