Agitation. Apathy. Difficulty waking from sleep. Difficulty learning new things. Poor concentration. Sense of impending doom.
These are the symptoms I entered into WebMD.com's self-diagnosis program.
The Web site suggests I may be suffering from any of 20 varied conditions, including dementia, lead poisoning and/or epilepsy.
WebMD is sadly unable to diagnose the true source of my affliction: senioritis.
Wikipedia, that wellspring of reliable information, defines senioritis as "decreased motivation toward studies displayed by students who are nearing the end of their high school or college careers."
But I'd say this definition doesn't go far enough.
It's not just my studies that I've lost all interest in. I don't want to go to work either.
I don't want to run errands or do the reading for my upcoming job with Teach for America.
Much as I love movies, I'm even reluctant to watch a documentary.
Frankly, it took an entire day to muster the strength just to write this column.
The only thing that really sounds appealing to me at this juncture in my four-year college career is sitting around in my pajamas, eating potato chips and watching endless episodes of "Miami Ink."
The fact that professors are still expecting me to wake up at a reasonable hour each morning and exhibit minimal brain function in class is at once hopelessly optimistic and completely unrealistic.
I feel that my performance for the last three and half years is more than enough to prove my deservedness of a diploma.
Why do I have to continue digging into my motivational reserves for these last few weeks of class?
Normally, spring passes in a blink. There's Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and spring break. Usually, finals are upon us and over before I've had time to go out and buy a summer's worth of sunscreen.
But not this year.
I'm convinced this April actually exists in some sort of time/space continuum where the distance to graduation increases every time I take a step toward it.
Wikipedia recommends preventative measures for senioritis, such as the assigning of research papers and senior projects.
Much as I love the free encyclopedia, I'm forced to doubt its accuracy in this instance.
Fight senioritis - the utter lack of desire to complete work - by assigning more work?!
My only reaction is to spend the next three hours looking through linked Wikipedia articles for other evidence of idiocy.
Then there are all the unlinked articles to read - I'm only partly ashamed to say I spent three hours expanding my knowledge of the Buffyverse via Wikipedia this past Wednesday.
Useless knowledge, but as of April 13, it's infinitely more interesting to me than the four basic elements of connectivity, which I must learn sometime between now and finals week if I plan on getting that pesky computer science credit and graduating.
When I am able to force productivity - once I've completed each day's Word Jumble, Sudoku, and crossword puzzle in The State Press - the feeling usually lasts just long enough to make a to-do list of all the things I really ought to be doing instead of making lists.
The trick here is to add "make to-do list" to the top of my actual to-do list and then cross it off, giving myself the feeling of having done something worthwhile with my day.
An informal poll of graduating friends reveals that I'm not the only one suffering from senioritis.
Several of them are running on little to no sleep as they pull all-nighters staring at a computer screen, willing themselves to complete their honors theses.
Their actual thought process: "If I look at the blank page long enough, eventually words will form themselves."
This is the kind of agony that academia is subjecting us to.
I'd almost consider trying to find a cure for it if there wasn't enough Buffyverse information on the Internet to keep me occupied until graduation.
Hanna Ricketson is counting down the days. Send interesting Buffy bits to: hanna.ricketson@asu.edu,
otherwise she may find herself doing something awful, like homework.
