Being it is the last quarter of the school year, I feel a discussion of the spreading epidemic of senioritis is appropriate.

One quick word on the word itself, senioritis, which I think is an inaccurate and inappropriate word for the condition. The suffix “itis” means “inflammation of,” just like in arthritis, and while I don’t know what an “arthr” is, it basically means inflammation of the joints. Therefore, senioritis should mean the inflammation of the senior. I figure that this could have been first applied to senior citizens, considering their constant bouts with -itises, but more likely people didn’t know their disease suffixes. I have yet to see the halls full of swollen seniors pain and fluids everywhere.

Senioritis is a major problem in our schools, and results in lower grades, poor attendance, and disgruntled teachers, as if anyone cared anyway. You can feel the air in the room just empty of any caring, and you could probably see it if it weren’t for the glazed over eyes everywhere. The only sound in a room full of seniors is of course the first bell. And sometimes snores. Basic symptoms of senioritis are a lack of caring, boredom, frequently sleeping in class, tardiness, and staring at the clock, among other things, which is why it is so hard to diagnose it, as it is different from your freshman year only in magnitude. There is no known cure, or treatment, but if there was, we wouldn’t care enough to take it anyway.

I have what is known as early-onset senioritis, where you begin to experience the early symptoms associated with senioritis in your late sophomore or early junior year. This likely happened so early to me because I was on track to finish high school almost a year and a half early as a home schooled student. This was a natural response of my body to delay the completion of high school courses too early. Dealing with the disease for so long has caused some hardships, as there is no known cure or treatment, but I have lived through it, with the only known long-term damage being a sharp increase in my cynical sarcastic humor.

Some say that senioritis isn’t a real disease, but that is bunk and hooey. Some say it is just indifference to the routine of our past 13 years, but if that were so, people would have stuff like mid-life-itis, … oh wait. Anywho, I can assure you that seniors everywhere endure terrible bouts with this whatever-it-is disease. My dad was struck with senioritis, and had to deal with it through his entire stay at college. The only thing that helped him overcome the symptoms of lingering senioritis was the threat of his dad pulling funding for his stay following his failing sophomore year the second time. Cutting the time he spent playing euchre probably didn’t hurt either.

There are solutions, I believe, to counter the spread. Senioritis generally strikes seniors, hence the name, and it seems to spread with an intensity around the same time of the year. Just as the flu has a flu season, there is, obviously, a senioritis season which is now peaking. Therefore, seniors must be let out of school this time of the year to do what they want. While this is a bold move, it is much better than routine-enslaved zombies roaming the halls for the five minutes after the bell rings.

However, since administrators, with their invisible whips, are unlikely to do this, a more acceptable solution is to let the disease take over the senior class, and since it causes us to work hard at doing nothing, we must be graded on our ability to do such. The entire grade we earn from late January to May will be based entirely on your ability to shirk work, slack off, and not pay attention. Extra credit will be given for disrupting the teacher. It will be considered cheating if you begin talking to another student who the teacher deems not working hard at not working. That would simply be unfair to the rest of us. If teachers begin accepting what we accept for ourselves, the entire learning environment will help students grow in the direction they want to.

Special exemptions should be granted to those who experience early-onset senioritis. Since this generally strikes the hardworking students who are in advanced classes, and therefore more likely to be exposed to seniors with the disease, teachers shouldn’t have much trouble seeing who we got it. It was simply passed on to us diligent students, and we contract our terrible punishment for being smart (that punishment all the average students have been praying to God for over the past decade.)

However, there is the trouble of getting senioritis recognized be the public as a real disease that seriously affects our society. As stated earlier, some people simply don’t see it as such. Do the teachers really think we enjoy living with our problem?

Well, sadly, they do think we enjoy every minute of our slacking off, and since we must find a scapegoat someplace, I place the place on t-shirts. Yes, that’s right, t-shirts are to blame. Everyday, the administration (Does that word send chills up anyone else’s spine? The phonetics of the word were designed to sound scary.) sees, generally the dumb freshman and the really dumb sophomores, wearing shirts saying, “I don’t suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.” You know them, you’ve seen them, there’s a lot like them.

So seniors, hear me now. You must go out and raise awareness about the disease. We must search for acceptable means to continue school, since we probably won’t be let out early, and a means that reflects our skills during our time of suffering. Schools everywhere must institute a curriculum that is matched well with our abilities. With expert slacking off, we can prove our abilities in our core talents that are honed after our wills succumb to senioritis. Awareness must be raised at every level, and that includes our peers, as some of them don’t believe in senioritis’s power.

Now only if any of us cared.