Looking back on pictures of freshman year move-in day, you can hardly believe how fast these past few years have flown by. You went from still being in high school and filling out college applications to your final few months as a senior in college and filling out graduation applications in the blink of an eye. Before you know it, you’ll be spreading your wings and taking flight into the “real world.” The scary thing is, you can barely manage to keep it together long enough to make it through your last two semesters of college. If you can relate to one or all of the following symptoms, you, my friend, have been struck by…SENIORITIS.
You fully utilize your allotted skips for class.
As a scared little freshman, you wouldn’t dare think about skipping class. What if you missed important notes? What if there was a pop quiz or what if your professor assigned group projects and you got stuck with a crappy group? Your syllabus explicitly stated that you were allowed to skip three classes before being penalized, but at that point in the game, you never wanted to risk it. Now, as a senior, you strategically plan when you will take advantage of your free skips. You know you will never get up in time for your 8am after a wild night of karaoke and $5 pitchers at the bar down the street, so you can almost bet when and where you’ll be using those skips. Freshman you would be shaking their heads at senior you with utter shame and disgrace, but senior you is still living that YOLO lifestyle, thinking to yourself, “Worth it!” as you turn off your alarms for the morning.
Friday class is just not an option.
For the past six semesters, you’ve never really considered what life might be like with a four-day class schedule. You wanted to make sure your Gen Eds were completed and the only classes you seemed to get in to were Monday/Wednesday/Friday sessions. Now that you’re a senior, the thought of having to wake up for class on a Friday is a total nightmare and just totally not an option. You cherish your one night a week where dancing on tables amongst your peers at the Hofbräuhaus is acceptable and there is no way you can deal with Friday commitments after a late night out on the town.
You have no idea what happens in the second half of your night class.
The only class left that fit with your near perfect schedule was a Thursday night 2.5 hour Philosophy class. You spend the first hour having to contemplate whether fire is “actually hot” or not, and by the time break rolls around, your eyeballs are falling out of your face with boredom and confusion and you legitimately don’t know if you can manage to survive through the remainder of your class. Lucky for you, you realized early on that your manbun-sporting, free-spirited professor doesn’t believe in attendance, so naturally, you leave early every time. Your professor could be giving away $20 bills during the second half of class and you would never know because frankly you just do not care. The saying “C’s get degrees” has never spoken to you so much in your whole life.
You wear the same outfit 2-3 times a week because you would rather spend your money on beer than on laundry.
Admit it. You caught on to the fact that you see two totally different crowds of people throughout the week. You have your Mon/Wed/Fri schedule and your Tues/Thurs schedule and there seems to be no overlap of the people you are forced to interact with every other day. So, when it comes down to spending $2 to do a load of laundry or repeating some outfits so you can spend your $2 on a 12oz draft of Bud Light at the bar, you know darn well where your money is going because you’re a senior and you couldn’t care less. (You’re welcome GDoor.)
You blow all your money on food and drinks because you realize it’s your last chance to be young and reckless.
As the end of the first semester of your senior year rolls around, the thought of spending precious nap time preparing meals for yourself is painful. You know you could be saving big bucks by buying your own groceries and cooking your own meals, but you know that once college is over, you literally have no choice but to be responsible with your money. (Hello, student loans.) So, you are going to milk these last few months of feeling like it is acceptable to spend your paychecks on Panera and Starbucks. You know very well you could buy two whole loaves of bread and an entire bag of coffee grounds for the amount you paid for one Turkey Bravo and a Grande Pumpkin Spice Latte, but you’re a college student with not much reckless time to spare, so it is totally worth being poor.
You cry every time someone asks you “What’s next?”
You remember being a kid and people would ask you what you wanted to be when you grew up. You would rattle off professions with confidence, unfazed by the weight of the question that was just asked of you. Now, after four years of college that is supposed to prepare you for the professional world, you break down into tears any time anyone even slightly mentions the future because this “future” they speak of is right around the corner. It never seemed like the day would actually come when your future plans became your super-super-ridiculously-near future plans. Deciding what to have for dinner is even a struggle at this stage of your life.