The diagnosis is in

by Amanda Stutevoss
Editorial Director

I have not been feeling well lately. I struggle to get out of the bed in the mornings. I fight to keep my eyes open during lectures. I have been plagued with a wicked stomach ache when I realize that I have to go to class in the mornings. I don't think that it is SARS or the flu or anything like that. It is worse.

I think it's the dreaded senioritis.

I hear it's going around.

I don't have the energy for anything lately, especially anything pertaining to school. It is a terrible way to spend the last month of my college career. For someone that is good at school and someone that likes school, senioritis is torture.

School has been the center of my life for the past 16 years. And now, it is standing on the outside of my inner circle gazing into the center that it once owned.

Why? It is not because all a sudden I stopped liking school. I still love it. I still want to spend all my time in the Campus Times room writing and editing stories. I miss staying up to 4 a.m. studying for tests. I want to sit in the lobby of C-top doing homework (or pretending to do homework while I really talked with friends.)

But I can'tI can't even get out of bed in the mornings.

I know that I am not the only one suffering from this disease. I am sure that over 75 percent of seniors can sympathize with me. However, I seem to think that I am the only one that is feeling this sickened.

My Mom and Dad used to always tell me, "You work too hard, take a day off and have some fun." But for me that was never an option. I had responsibilities and things to do. I was having fun; school was fun.

Now it seems like a job. I can't remember homework assignments or deadlines. I seem to overlook small errors just to avoid having to do extra work, and I neglect to go the extra mile like I have in the past. I have turned into the student that I hate.

So I have decided to start treatments. These treatments are slow moving.

They are self induced treatments that include a lot of coffee and occasional doses of no dozing. My treatments entail taking small breaks throughout the day to collect myself ­ call it meditation.

Yes, at times it is painful, but it will only last four dour weeks. And at the end of the four weeks you get to go through the final treatment, which puts senioritis into remission; it's called graduation.

So, I have come to a conclusion - why waste the last month of my college career?

In less than a month I will not ever have to go to another class again if I so choose. I will never have sit through a lecture that seems not important, and I will never have to pull an all nighter to finish a paper on World War II.

In less than a month I will enter the real world where there is no cure to real world-itis. Enough of the feeling sorry for myself or feeling bogged down by big final projects for classes. I need to enjoy these last moments in college and realize that this, as crazy as it sounds, may be the last time of freedom I really have. Soon I will become a slave to the workforce.

I will admit, however, that it is still hard for me to get up early enough to fit a shower into my morning regiment.

Amanda Stutevoss, a senior broadcasting and journalism major, is editorial director of the Campus Times. She can be reached by e-mail at astute4@aol.com.