Illustration by Alicia Toldi.
Dear Everyone Else Suffering from Senioritis,
First, I’d like to apologize for the serious no-show in last week’s paper. A mixture of bad winds, lack of access to the Internet (off-campus, surprisingly) and a shocked and slightly appalled DIRECTV worker led to my being MIA. My bad. I can’t help but feel that a lot of us seniors have been missing in action around here. I think I know why, and I’d like to champion change. I do resemble a younger, less gray Obama, after all.
As most individuals—teachers, friends, parents, dentists—might have informed you recently, there are less than a hundred days until we reach that milestone that some are calling “freedom,” “your demise” or “an excuse to sit on your parents couch watching Maury for six months.” Graduation, the day we get to sit hungover and/or crying under the sun while our parents ignore our greenish hue and unnecessary sunglasses, is just around the bend. And as exhilarating, horrifying or mournful as that may be, this is not the time to get all jaded and mean. We must show, not unity, because we haven’t ever been super in that department, but a presence on campus or in the local community while we still can. Even for those beyond excited to exit the gates of Connecticut College, this is the last time to be as reckless (without consequence) in decision-making, scheduling, various forms of consumption and dance floor battles as possible. It’s almost over.
Also, I’m not entirely sure it’s fair to our individual selves, to our classmates or to the classes below us, to let a widespread case of senioritis normalize the inability to come up with something more creative than an ABC dance (really? C’mon). If this means we all have to watch Animal House or Old School or Van Wilder in order to remember that we’re not a big school with fraternities or sororities or weird guys too old for college, but that, God damn it, we’ve got a Sysco truck full of attitude, then so be it.
I’ve been lucky enough to know that the senior class is a creative bunch. When a large group of people is bored, seniors have proven perfectly capable of making something that decisively does not suck. Drunken charades, theme parties like “Fat Camp” and “Futuristic 1970s,” basement dance parties (known as “burners”), hell, even a Tide party (I DO NOT ENDORSE THIS ONE) my freshmen year had me sliding up and down a hallway for hours of fun. And all participants walked away smelling better than attendees of any normal floor party.
And no, people in the class of 2011 did not enact all of those events, but people in every preceding senior class produced them. I refuse to believe that the best we can produce is a Tuesday night at Exchange or an America Dance. As many characters in the hilarious animated comedy Archer state it: Nooooope.
So I propose that some brainstorming happen at all the delightful events that the school has been throwing lately. Those seemingly happy gatherings, the message of which is undoubtedly “Enjoy us getting you hammered for free! In less than 100 days, you’ll find out that booze in bars gets pretty expensive, and that your weekend antics are bordering on some David Hasselhoff/Anna Nicole Smith nonsense,” are perfect times for us to think about how we can invigorate life at Conn. Even though the old saying is that “shit rolls downhill,” according to André 3000, we don’t have to believe said shit even stinks! Count it.
We’ve got things to do, jobs to apply for and happy hours to attend. These are things that I understand. Sometimes, you want to get away, desperately; New York is two hours away and Daft Punk is playing there, not my house, so why the hell not?! I get that too. But our time here is more limited than you think, so it benefits you to enjoy the close proximity to all of your friends while you can, and to do so in a way where you won’t confuse one Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday night with all the others. Otherwise you might end up like Sammy Adams or Asher Roth, rapping about the days that were, wearing ill-fitting non-funny, nor ironic t-shirts. You don’t want that, do you?
Because, no, I don’t want to go to a bar with a stripper pole,
Kiefer •
