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Well, this is it. Today begins the last spring break I will ever experience. No sun-soaked beaches or exotic destinations await me this year. Almost finished with my college career, I have found myself with no money, no energy and no motivation.
Instead, I’m going to sleep in every day, write a few papers and spend some quality time at the Bear Brew. I could join some friends for a wild week in southern Florida or a Caribbean cruise, but frankly, I don’t have the ass for it anymore.
Spring break used to be something to look forward to: two weeks to drink heavily, see old friends and get a tan. That was way back in the days of my youth, when I was a nubile 18-year-old with not a care in the world. Now I’m a jaded 21-year-old retirement candidate with 15 extra pounds and a bad attitude.
Trying to graduate will do that to you. Every time I turn around I discover yet another requirement I haven’t fulfilled. Somehow I managed to leave the most work-intensive, trying classes for last, and I need them to graduate.
The scary part is that I don’t care. Senioritis has set in, and the symptoms are worse than I thought.
I used to be a grade fanatic; one of those grating kids in the front who refuse to share homework and figures out her GPA every time she gets an assignment back.
These days I’m the unwashed girl in the back with a baseball hat who screams, “Yeah! D for diploma, baby!” I blame my parents.
In my house, grades were important. My parents were seeing to it that I was properly challenged in the fourth grade. While my friends were throwing spit balls and making out in the janitor’s closet I was in the library, diligently working on my thesis on cats.
In seventh grade I took the SATs and skipped lunch to hide in the library. I looked forward to standardized tests. By high school, there was no backing out. There’s nothing worse than parents who know what you’re capable of. Now here I am, about to graduate college with respectable grades and a job waiting for me at a major newspaper. So what’s the problem? Why am I sputtering out in the home stretch?
At the beginning of this year, I was pumped. I was going to graduate with honors and I landed the job as the editor of the Maine Campus. How cool was I? Not very, as it turned out.
Being the editor is not the glamorous position I believed it to be. I somehow failed to notice that the outgoing editor had lost the ability to reason and that his eyes didn’t focus on anything anymore.
I failed to realize that I would be in for 60-hour work weeks and sleepless nights. My GPA went into the toilet and I started eating McDonalds three meals a day. My phone never stopped ringing, thanks to all of the alert readers out there who called to tell me that I sucked.
I also failed to realize what school is really about. It’s not just about getting straight As or graduating with honors. It’s about discovering what’s important to you.
Senioritis is when it finally occurs to you that a college degree is an excuse to get a job. The real education in college is all the things you learn about yourself outside of class. It just takes most of us four years to figure that out.
So these days, I spend a lot of time staring off into space. If I’m feeling really motivated I’ll head down to the Bear Brew for a few games of cribbage. Suddenly, drinking on a Tuesday seems perfectly reasonable. Hell, I’ve survived four years of this place. I deserve it.
Penny Morton is a senior journalism major.
