Senioritis: a Slanderous Solution

Lately, a peculiar feeling has ensnared me. It compels me to take long, meandering walks around the school during bathroom breaks and renders me immobile during particularly slow moving periods. I find myself unable to look away from the clock, which moves slowly, possibly because it is broken. Gazing out of the windows, some of which boast a glimpse of the glittering East River, I will suddenly be seized with the urge to escape. The view, no doubt meant to inspire and invigorate students, suddenly seems unnecessarily cruel, a reminder that I can only observe the carefree pedestrians below, never be one. It is in these moments I feel a certain solidarity with the office workers above us, as we work towards an uncertain goal in one of the first office buildings in the Financial District (JEMB). With any luck, 75 Broad may soon be converted to yet another unfeeling apartment complex. But for now, it is a space where I need to list three reasons for apartheid abolition. 

 

Soon, however, the feeling strikes again, tenfold. Focus and determination are no match for this feeling, which guides me gently towards a sweet nap. Is sleep deprivation the culprit? Or is it the last vestiges of my youthful spirit rebelling against impending adulthood?

 

Members of the pedagogical community will be quick to entitle this as an ailment they believe they have so cleverly christened “senioritis”. They will explain away a loss in motivation, lower grades, and glazed looks with this one word. I find that crass. “Senioritis” is yet another negative term unfairly attached to blooming young adults. No, this feeling that moves us so is not an -itis, a medical issue to be fixed. On the contrary: it is one of the more delicate feelings one can feel in such a cold unfeeling society such as ours, and we must cherish it.  

 

Afflicted with “senioritis”, my more serious suffering has begun to vanish. I am no longer stricken with stress. I am immune to grade induced misery, the worst malady. Such a dramatic transformation seems overwhelmingly positive.

 

Historically, the masses have been most successful in improving their conditions not by existing within the structures that enslave them, but rather by striking them down.

“Alas,” lamented an anonymous person considerably more anti-establishment than I, “we are but powerless cogs in the malevolent DOE machine.” 

And so, redefining senioritis by embracing it is the most powerful thing we can do until a more radical person may save us. I encourage you all to eat a nice, hearty breakfast for once rather than rush to school, regardless of anyone waiting to catch and reprimand you by the doors. Tear the late slip off the machine with reckless abandon.Have conversations with fellow bathroom breakers. Take a mental health day or five. Through collective actions like these, we can reclaim our agency.

 

I whether this last month in this place with few regrets, buoyed along by a beautiful lightness. I am joined in this opinion by many of my peers. So again I ask, how can what we so passionately feel be an ITIS? Let it be an -itis in name only, for it is a beautiful thing, a cure, an antidote. Those who attempt to stigmatize it, who sneer, “Senioritis has got you!” are out of touch.