Battling Senioritis … Or How I Learned to Love AUC

With just two months left in your university experience, you find yourself slugging behind, face-down and crawling your way to the finish line.

No sight of finishing strong here, just slow and paced movements. At this point you’re content with giving the bare minimum, after you’ve put in 150 percent in the last three years.

Three years of 8am classes. Three years of nerve-wrecking group projects. Three years of massive anxiety.

Three years were more than enough, and now you can’t wait to slam the book shut. You’re ready for not just a new chapter, but an entirely different volume.

Senioritis has officially crawled its way into your veins and consumed your mind with one continuous question, “when will this all be over?”

You become restless; counting the weeks, days, and even seconds to that moment where you hand in your last final exam and hopefully never sit down to be tested again.

You simply cannot wait to walk out and exit the life of an exhausted student.

Here senioritis engulfs you completely. You no longer remember the laughs in the plaza, or the mid-class unified looks of confusion as you and your peers blankly stare at the boards. You seem to forget the numerous friendships you’ve made across those tiring years of studying. The countless inside jokes seem to slip away, overshadowed by memories of anxiety and inadequate grades.

Most importantly, you neglect and belittle the new concepts and ideologies you picked up during your years on campus. The scholars you now see as idols and those you were encouraged to criticise have shaped your mindset and outlook on life, and yet senioritis blocks any memory of your learning progress.

The knowledge you’ve gained apart from the vital skills you’ve developed, including critical analysis and how to express your opinion, are additions that have allowed you to flourish in unmeasurable ways. Wherever you go from now on, you will take this magnitude of information with you and utilise it in surprising ways.

So, why is it that as we get closer to the end, just a few steps from the finish line, we seem to forget all the life-changing lessons our time on campus has taught us?

For some, negative experiences might have unfortunately eclipsed the positive ones; however, it is up to us to highlight how each and every encounter on campus has changed us in one way or another. Every failed exam, incomplete essay and every single group-project fight has left us with more knowledge, maturity and grounding.

Our experiences make us who we are, and if we are so ashamed about our university days that we can’t wait for them to come to an end, what does that say about how we see ourselves as a product of these years?

Senioritis is just another rope tying us down and only if we stop holding on will we sprint across that finish line.

Strong and steady, we will win the race.