Forget the flu. The most potent disease going around campus is a variant of the itis. Officially, the itis is that feeling you get after you eat too much soul food and you don’t care about anything in the world but taking a nap. Well, the strain going around campus is classified as senioritis, a result of spending too much time (usually three or more years) in the turbulent role of an undergraduate. Its symptoms include not studying, wasting time and drinking too much beer. I’ve got it, my friends, and I’m happy to be contagious.

No joke, it’s been a pretty killer month, especially for a senior with nothing to lose. I’ve been caught between a rock, a research project that just won’t work, a plethora of tricky girls and a hard place. The slime at Prometric canceled my GRE appointment twice and, to top it all off, I bombed some stupid probability test because I was too busy studying for quantum mechanics. That’d be analogous to Sub-Zero forgetting how to punch because he’s too busy practicing fatalities.

You know what though? I can’t really complain. Nobody ever said senior year was going to be a walk in the park. I guess the biggest problem is that I have, to a certain extent, stopped caring about the things that seem increasingly superficial. Oh, I still do study when I need to. I actually enjoy my more challenging classes. I’m just weary of the B.S. course work, and I’m starting to find that, academically, pursuits other than the pursuit of decent GPA are far more rewarding.

For example, I really get a kick out of teaching. Some poor kids ended up with me as their lab TA, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I enjoy every minute of running through experiments and helping them out with those ferocious WebAssign problems. That research project I mentioned I’m doing — I enjoy my work even when I stare at a computer screen for hours and get nowhere. You see, I’m not a cynic — I’m just turning into an old man with a bad case of the itis.

I think I’m even suffering from social senioritis. There was a time a few years back when I’d work hard to make friends, to go out to parties and to find beer. I was an underclassman with a cool card and a “walk 500 miles to fall down at your door” kind of attitude. Goodness, I used to keep track of every beer can, conserving supplies like a squirrel before winter. Sure, life was a chore, but it never felt like one.

Now that I’m an old man, every crappy bar on Glenwood is open before me and I could probably go to a party every night of the week. No sweat, right?

In an ironically paradoxical sense, it all feels like a chore nowadays. Most of the “trendy” bars that people my age frequent are worse than a three-kegger in a two-bedroom apartment. I’d rather play a nice, quiet game of pong at a friend’s place than have my eardrums ruptured in a smoky underground dump with five-dollar beers. The only reason I drag myself away from Hillsborough Street is to achieve my goal of finding a single 20-something chick with a job, a busy schedule and an attraction to college boys so I can switch from “Beast” to imports.

So, dear reader, here I sit like an old man on a dusty porch commenting on life, albeit in column format. I’ll be the first to admit that this won’t be the most effective column I’ve ever written. People like it when I write about crashing parties and drunk trips to Waffle House, funny things that the college kid in everybody can appreciate. I too like writing about those things — it’s healthy to have wild experiences, and it’s great fun for me to recount my more daring exploits.

I guess that I just find it sickly hilarious that, at 2 a.m. on Saturday night, the most fulfilling thing I’ve done all month (outside of going to church and talking with my family and close friends) is sitting outside in the cold rain in my boxers, slightly drunk. It must have something to do with all this senioritis, and I want to share my experience with my friends and with all of the younger kids who have so much to look forward to.

I know I’m not kidding anybody. I’m still very much a young man with a lot to look forward to, and I admit that I’m thankful to be where I am. It is, after all, a good life, even if I feel like an old man and I can’t bring myself to study for that one silly class or drag myself out to the next dark, loud bar to which the girls of the week want to go.

In the end, it is very much the simple things that matter, and I think that is the lesson to take away from this both beautiful and gloomy disease called senioritis. The difference between an A and a C grade pales in comparison to the lasting knowledge I get out of my classes and my ability to teach others. The popularity contest of society has become meaningless compared with my individual relationships with friends and family. I’ve got the itis for now, and I think I’ll go enjoy the clarity of priorities it brings while I can.

E-mail Kenneth at [email protected].