Story by KRISTIN GALLAGHER, Business Manager—
Constructing an advice column for the first week of the spring semester has been terribly hard for me.
I found myself struggling to settle on just one idea to express to the readers when so many events will take place in the upcoming months.
Should I advise everyone to start planning his or her spring break now to ensure its awesomeness?
Should I provide the proper steps to maintaining a decent GPA to round off the year in good academic standing?
Rather than expanding my knowledge to the general student body as I usually do, I have decided to focus on a select group this week—the seniors.
I am assuming, based on my own personal experience as a senior, that those of you set to graduate this spring have been experiencing the same odd emotions and behaviors as I have.
Among these emotions and behaviors include carelessness, anticipation, procrastination and a general lack of ambition to do anything class related.
Overall, we are plagued with a serious case of senioritis.
This is not to say that we strive to underachieve this semester, or that we are exerting no effort into maintaining our current GPA’s. No, this is something far beyond our control.
As much as we want to finish out our years at UCM just as strong as we began them four, five or even more years ago (for the super-seniors out there… no shame), we find ourselves so overwhelmed with excitement at the thought of moving into a new chapter of our lives that we lose focus of the fact that we still have five months of school work to complete.
Senioritis is not an indication of how we feel towards our educators or toward the university. It is merely a mental state that most soon-to-be graduates cannot avoid. Therefore, I offer some advice to my fellow seniors.
Focus not on what is to come, but what is.
I know this sounds a little cliché, and perhaps a bit too much for this article, but I have found these words to be very helpful in all aspects of my senior year thus far. If we spend all of our time wondering about what is to come after we leave this campus, we neglect to see what is happening around us right now.
We have friends, faculty and family to spend time with before we walk across that stage in May, and our senioritis may be preventing us from acknowledging them.
The truth is, many things will change as we receive our degrees, and a responsibility to use what we have learned in school will be placed upon us as we try to make a path in the real world.
With such responsibility, it is likely we will have less time to spend with those people we love and appreciate.
I find it necessary to take the time we have now to show them our support before we are faced with obstacles that will prevent us from doing so in the future.
If we look past the present, we are missing out on the tail end of the best years of our lives.
College has been a time for us to make new friends, find out what kind of people we want to be, and lose touch with reality every now and then without much care.
A lot of the freedom we have had to be careless in the past four years will be left on this campus as we accept our diplomas and leave UCM behind us.
Take advantage of this last little bit of freedom! Go out. Make more friends. Have a drink. Do start planning this spring break to make sure it is best one you have ever had.
So, my fellow seniors, do not let this epidemic rob you of right now. Do not let senioritis persuade you to waste away what little carefree time you have left.
If you are going to put off this semester’s schoolwork, do so for a damn good reason, and make it the best time you have ever spent procrastinating.