Senioritis

In this week's column, I thought I'd address the issue of "Senioritis," that well known disease that supposedly infects seniors in high school and college who have finally realized that they need to get at least a 160% (which, incidentally, only counts as an "A" in the MU plus-minus system) their remaining classes to get that cum laude added to their degree. Is it worth it to put in the extra effort to get the Latin on the sheepskin? Probably not. Unless you have maintained a honor-roll GPA, you will probably live by the mantra that most seniors live by in their senior year: "Cs get degrees."

The problem is that most of us aren't bad students; it's just that most of us aren't good students, either. They should apply a Latin letters incentive for those of us that now realize that the difference between a 2.9 and a 3.0 is as about as important as choosing whether or not you should have aloe in your toilet paper. I'd love to hear in May, "Today Alexander Taft graduates with super medium honors." Huzzah! When I put this on my resume, it will say to my employer, "He's smart enough to BS his way to a 3.0!"

But most potential employers don't care that much about GPA; they care about real-world experience. For that, you have to get an internship. I have an internship right now. At least, that's what my pimp Willie calls it. To me it just seems like I'm whoring myself for slave-labor prices, but maybe that's just the nature of the beast. After all, nothing says real-world experience like an internship.

The internship often takes up a lot of time, which eats up time that I would normally be spending on school work. Oh, hell, who am I kidding? It's all about procrastinating.

When you're a senior, you will find anything, and I mean anything to prevent you from doing your work. I am so burned out on school that I have been going out and killing abortion doctors when I should be studying; and I'm pro-choice! I'm 21 years old, and I spend more time playing video games now than I have ever spent in my entire life. At what point does it become acceptable to outgrow video games now? Every guy I know plays video games like he's getting paid for it, and more girls than you might expect know how to beat up a whore like a pro in Grand Theft Auto.

But the latest obsession of mine is a little game called Animal Crossing, which is only available for Nintendo Gamecube. In this game, one lives life as a pseudo-human being-type creature (you have horns for some reason) in a town full of animals. The object of the game is to obtain more furniture, and therefore, more happiness. This game was originally written as a family-development game in Japan. Wow. Just when you thought the Japanese couldn't technol-ify anything else, they went and did it to life. And what's worse, they made it horribly addictive.

Number one sign that you have an awful case of senioiritis: You can't even complete a 500-word column on the subject that you decided it was going to be on.

Also appeared in October 31, 2002 edition of the MU Student News.