My Case for Senioritis
Senioritis is okay. I want you to embrace it. If you’re graduating, leaving school, leaving your job, etc. Anything that has to do with geographic relocation can be classified as senioritis. Have I caught it before? Absolutely!
Senior year at Case Western, once I received my first graduate school acceptance, I essentially put down my books and enjoyed everything I had ever wanted to in Cleveland and on campus. In summary, I spent half my time with my girlfriend and half my time doing activities with my fraternity brothers with overlap between the two, of course. By graduation, I played in more intramural hockey games than I had in the previous three and a half years. Same with community service. Ditto for random talks, plays, events, etc. More importantly, I learned more about my friends than I had in the previous three and a half years.
Life seemed more fun. It was. But at what cost? Minimal, if anything at all. On paper, the only thing I had to worry about was not failing. However, strangely, aside from Physics II E&M (more like S&M…but not as enjoyable), I did very well academically. So it is not as if my parading through Cleveland and Case Western my senior year came at the expense of academics.
Fast forward two years later. I am leaving Penn in May. What does this call for? Senioritis! Does that mean being lazy and goofing off? If you read the above, you’d know that the answer is absolutely not. In fact, I’m more productive than I have been in a while. I’m attending biology department seminars, random talks given by professors or students I’ve never even heard of, going to ‘optional’ recitation sessions for my genetics class (I was the only student who showed up today!), etc. It’s as if ’senioritis’ is kicking me in the butt saying, ‘DO EVERYTHING YOU WANT TO DO!’ Outside of academics, I’ve played poker at an Atlantic City casino, I am going to a Flyers-Bruins hockey game with Shrenik on Sunday, and will likely get to do a lot of things I haven’t done in my time at Penn.
My point is this: embrace senioritis. It is really the truest form of hedonism possible. Not giving two shits about anything is almost like putting yourself in a drunken state where your inhibitions are lowered and your desires are fulfilled. For me, they happen to be partially nerdy (wanting to go to seminars and recitations). The nerd part is about soaking in as much from Penn as possible. Maybe it’s because I do not know if I will be in school next year and am grasping onto whatever pieces of knowledge I can find.
But maybe it’s because I could care less about responsibility and am doing what I want to do.
