I turn to my old friend and comrade Urban Dictionary to help define the topic of this column’s theme: Senioritis: when high school seniors get lazy, no longer give a damn, and just can’t [sic] wait till school ends. I was convinced I would not catch this disease, the same way I am convinced every winter that I will not develop a cold.
But now I sit at home having been proved a fool twice over: I am currently expelling my body’s weight in snot into Kleenex, and not doing an ounce of homework. At first, it was the heaven we Marlborough students have always dreamed of. But as the days now blend into each other like a drowsy stew, I find myself wishing things would start happening to me again. Turns out the bliss of inactivity is not all it’s cracked up to be.
The day starts like this: I arrive at school with a Peppermint Mocha in hand and head into my first class. We enjoy a YouTube video or two and engage in some intellectual discourse: “Gerald was most definitely the best character on Hey Arnold. I mean, his afro was rectangular. Can’t do much better than that.”
Then, a free period. I pull out my planner and see what today’s bounty of education has in store for me. Answer? Nothing. It seems, then, that I have no other choice than to pull out my iPhone and start perusing Texts From Last Night. Of course, this is not even a choice at all, since phones are not allowed to be on during school hours and I am not amused by the drunken and sordid acts of the sinful youth anyway (I prefer Prayers from Last Night). Besides, there’s only, like, 25 new entries a day (…I have heard from others who engage in such base and common entertainment).
And then what? Another nap? Another Diet Coke from the vending machine? It seems that a little known symptom of this infamous Senioritis is paralyzing boredom.
Now, one may say “Come on Faith, life is what you make of it! Why not start a new book? Start volunteering somewhere?” And you’re right, internal dialogue, I should find something to fill the void. But I have fallen so far into this cult of leisure it’s hard to crawl back out and make something out of my adolescent existence.
In my Shorter 19th Century Russian Masterpieces Class, we read Uncle Vanya, from which I find this profound and fitting quote: “You have infected us with your idleness.” I find that the senior’s typical eagerness to rid oneself of motivation has injected in me a crippling torpor that I cannot recover from. The definition I discovered is a little too accurate:
I am indeed “lazy,” and I do “no longer give a damn” about anything, and yes, I “can’t [sic] wait until school ends” every day, because it’s so, so boring. It seems that Senioritis truly is an epidemic of dastardly proportions, and the only antidote is the work itself. However, I think I can endure a few more months before resuming treatment, thank you very much.
“View from the Top” by Faith ‘10.
