As we close in on the last month of Spring Semester, a lot of seniors are sick with all too familiar symptoms. But rather than suffering from chills and a high fever, we're plagued by the inability to concentrate in class, to care about completing assignments and to put forth that extra effort to avoid a downward trend in grade point average.
Just like during our last year in high school, we've come down with a serious case of senioritis.
College seniors, however, have a lot of added stress outside of the classroom that surpasses the hour or two of extracurricular activities known by our former high school selves.
The 300- and 400-level courses we take require research that lasts for weeks or even months. Our professors encourage us to join pre-professional groups and take leadership roles within them to boost our resumes.
According to its Web site, Ball State University offers 100 departmental and professional organizations to complement its 170 undergraduate majors, meant to guide and develop tomorrow's professionals from today's students.
Ball State is known and respected by employers for these organizations that, along with often-required internships, give us the opportunity to gain real experience before leaving the safety net of the university.
But between classes, internships, part-time jobs, pre-professional organizations and job searching, seniors have their hands - and schedules - full. Coordinating group meeting times to fit four or five of those busy schedules often makes for 12- or 14-hour days running on far fewer than the recommended eight hours of sleep.
Ball State, you're creating a lot of well-educated, highly experienced graduates - complete with sleep deprivation and stress migraines.
And we're not even working for Trump yet.
So with our last few months of so-called college freedom, we slack off. We ditch class to grab lunch with friends, who in a few short months may be cities, states or even countries away.
And we pay for it. We get sick from lack of sleep and high levels of stress and have to skip class to sit in the Amelia T. Wood Health Center for hours. Due dates for classwork we've known about since day one are upon us and it seems impossible to catch up. Final projects loomahead but seem abstract, too far ahead to cause concern compared to more pressing deadlines.
So Bracken Library becomes our second - or sometimes first - home; it's a place where we eat, sleep and study. Projects keep us there until 3 a.m., knowing our alarm clocks will be sounding in just a few short hours.
Since I've been at Ball State, they've even aided us in our mission to never leave our studies by creating the Bookmark Cafe, providing caffeine and carbohydrates right inside the library.
We look forward to graduation day with the hope of our dream jobs starting the next Monday, with competitive salaries and benefits.
The unfortunate fact, however, is that most of us will be working for next to nothing after graduation, snatching up the first job we can get. Discovering this after four years of debt-building at our alma mater makes our efforts seem almost futile.
We're led to think that joining one more organization or becoming vice president of something will make the subtle difference to give us an edge over the rest of the nation's graduating seniors. We pencil in one more hour of meetings behind one more hour of library time.
Maybe it's because we never learned to properly manage our time. Maybe we never cared to. Maybe it's just the way it works and I should leave well enough alone. But there needs to be some sort of reprieve from senior year stress. In the meantime, I'll be seeing you at the coffee shop.
And make mine a Venti.
Ally Covington is a senior public relations major and writes 'Cashing Out' for the Daily News. Her views do not necessarily agree with those of the newspaper.
Write to Ally at alcovington@bsu.edu
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