By: Conner Williams Editor-in-Chief
The disease is spreading at an alarming rate. Nearly 25 percent of all college students have become infected and top-level scientists have yet to develop a cure. Students across the country are exhibiting frightening symptoms, and there doesn’t appear to be any way to treat them.
This terrifying disease is not one that has appeared in the major news headlines; it’s not Ebola or the swine flu, it’s something much more infectious and threatening.
Senioritis.
I know, just seeing the word makes me shudder too. In fact, just writing this very account has caused my symptoms to worsen even more; I’ve had to stop and put my face in my hands in defeat at least a dozen times. That’s right, I am a victim of senioritis, and my case might be one of the worst I’ve seen.
Senioritis causes extreme feelings of laziness, tardiness (and, often times, complete absence altogether), insomnia and/or lethargy, sudden alcohol overconsumption, and a complete lack of motivation. The only thing that keeps these symptoms from keeping one completely incapacitated is the debilitating fear of not receiving his or her degree in time, and even that is becoming less and less of a motivating factor.
In all seriousness though, it’s starting to become a serious problem for me. In a completely honest and conservative estimate, I’ve probably skipped 60 percent of my classes this quarter. Yeah, I get it, I’m a bad student. Whatever. Look, this isn’t a personal shot at my professors (if you’re reading this, know that I think you’re awesome and the work you do is amazing), I just really don’t find much use from going to class. In the increasingly technologically-driven world our educational system thrives in, I don’t see the need to go to class when all materials and information are provided for me online. I simply can’t handle sitting through lectures anymore.
This is something that I think is a major flaw in our education system. To me, there’s a big difference between gaining an education and going to school. I don’t think the two go hand-in-hand. I’ll be completely honest: I despise school. I don’t believe that the traditional classroom setting is an optimal learning environment, at least for me. I don’t learn well by sitting there listening to someone 30 years my senior talking in monotone to me (Bueller … Bueller …). I’ll pass. I’d rather just teach myself the material in the comfort of my own home.
Not to mention the fact that I have to take classes that have absolutely nothing to do with my career just so that I can get a “well-rounded” liberal arts education (aka: keep students in school longer and suck more money out of them), I just dislike going to class. Students have almost zero input for course curricula and are forced to complete arbitrarily important assignments that usually don’t do much for them; it’s simply one going through the motions so that a professor can have something to grade and then assign a subjective value to a student. And, once again, this is not a shot at my instructors; it’s a shot at our education system as a whole.
I think this is the root of my senioritis: a lack of a reason to care. Yes, I know my education is important, and I do take it seriously for the most part. But really, why should I care about half the stuff I’m taught? I’m going to have to be trained to do whatever job I end up with anyways, so what’s the point of learning all of this information that I’m just going to forget over spring break?
I think Peter Gibbons from “Office Space” said it best: “It’s not that I’m lazy, it’s that I just don’t care.” So, I ask you, my faithful readers, why should I care? If you feel the need to berate/celebrate my claims, please contact me.
Contact the author at journaleditor@wou.edu or follow on Twitter @journalEIC
