Skipping class. Doing all your homework Sunday night. Drinking excessively – Thursday, Friday, Saturday and sometimes Monday and Tuesday. Not caring about school. Being lazy. Writing a paper the night before it’s due. Not studying – at all.

Even for seniors who don’t graduate until May, senioritis has kicked in.

With a year or less left of school and after 17 plus years of books and tests, it’s hard for many college students to stay focused. Distractions tend to come first. Worries and hopes for the future, parties, excursions with friends, work and other of life’s substance take the place of reading, writing and arithmetic.

For the past month, I’ve noticed my friends and I have been spending a significantly greater amount of time at the bar than last year. I talk to friends in the middle of the week, and they happily recite: “Who cares about that exam Thursday morning? We’re 21. We are seniors!” Another night’s pleasure is worth it to those afflicted with senioritis. It’s not often that you can live in a world of your peers with endless opportunities for socializing and excitement.

In the past month, I’ve received numerous phone calls from friends here and at other schools that all have the same flow: “I hate school. I don’t do any work. I’ve been out to the bars five times this week. I think I am failing a class. I don’t know what I want to do when I graduate. I don’t care about school. I have some messed up guy/girl problem that is way more complicated and messed up than anyone else’s. I miss you!”

Yeah, that’s pretty much the standard phone call these days.

I used to think college would magically make everyone figure everything out. You’d come out knowing exactly what you want to do as a career, knowing exactly how to get that career, having no other major problems, nothing holding you back, nothing to decide or figure out or worry about, a handful of good friends to be your future bridesmaids and many good stories to tell your grandchildren. But in reality, most of those things aren’t true. We are all just as unsure about everything as we were in the first place. We just have a few more experiences, a few more bonds and a little more insight into ourselves.

We all have our dreams for what we want to do when we get out, but most of those will probably change. Half the people don’t even know what they want to do. We forget that we don’t have to have our lives figured out right now. We have up to 80 more years to do that. Now we need to focus on coming up with a few viable ideas of what to do the first year or so after college.

This Homecoming weekend may be the last for many Kent State students. Take it in. It may be one of your last chances to be young and pseudo-carefree. Go to the game. Have a beer.

And as for the plague of senioritis – what can we do about it?

I say, don’t do a damn thing.

Just make sure you pass your classes.

And be sure to take a lot of pictures.

Allison Pritchard is a senior electronic media production major and columnist for the Daily Kent Stater. Contact her at [email protected].