The Juice Box

As a second semester senior in art school I am finding myself to slowly get embraced by the dangerous clutches of “senior-itis”, the well known attack of a lack of motivation accompanied by symptoms of laziness and burnout that seniors in both college and high school experience just at the final stretches of their last semesters. For me I believe I simply have the “-itis”, a sort of constant struggle to stay motivated to complete tasks that are necessary and some simple. They seem daunting and impossible. Maybe it’s laziness, maybe it’s some sort of undiagnosed attention deficiency, or maybe a result of a larger issue.

College is an interesting concept. Throw a bunch of 18 year olds with no life experience into a bubble of humanity and expect them to know exactly what they want to do and exactly who they want to be. You have to go to a good school, go for four years, you must apply for scholarships and internships, join clubs, build your resume, but also live your life! Make friends, go out, have a drink, date people. But don’t get distracted but don’t take the time for granted. I think you get the picture. It all seems very depressing. Setting yourself up for the real world is depressing. Because it is never the way it’s promised to you as a child. And I think most of us realize this pretty quickly. It loses its color and charm. And maybe along the way you do too. It can be easy to feel so much of this weight at this point of an academic career. Right before the launch. You look back on opportunities you could have taken, choices you could have made differently, and people who you could have gotten to known. But really what purpose does that have besides once again being depressing. I think now is the time to sit with where I am now, I have a solid plan of what I want to do after I graduate college but plans aren’t always the most reliable mode of operation there is. So now I enjoy the last classes, the last parties, the last nights watching TV with roommates, the last winter, the last first day of school, the last assignment. I’ll savor them as much as I can because I will never be in this stage ever again. While that is maybe terrifying, I find it very exciting. I have to be honest. This stage in my life has seen me laying down, watching shows on my computer alone in my room quite a bit. I don’t say that to depress you but to be honest with you. I don’t have a fire burning under me telling me to get up and participate in life. Because I don’t want to participate I want to conquer it, fight it, and beat it. Ambitious and naive, I know. But I am someone who operates in extremes. I love being busy and not having the time to allow myself to become lazy and unmotivated. I love having extreme purpose and I fly when I do the things that breathe air into my lungs. College just hasn’t quite been the place where the oxygen is sufficient.