As a 2nd-semester high school senior drift­ing through the flora and fauna of April, May and June with a col­lege accep­tance let­ter in hand, school was the last thing on my mind.

Sure, I was mildly inspired by my final flower-box project for Ceram­ics 1, and I had glimpsed the smiley-face bul­letin board post­ings remind­ing all seniors to "Keep those grades up! Seniori­tis didn't get you into col­lege." And sure, I had got­ten a rather pas­sion­ate start on my Eng­lish senior paper on Kurt Vonnegut's recur­ring motif of mean­ing­less­ness, but my pas­sion con­tra­dicted the thesis's theme of nihilism, so I had to stop caring.

Truth be told, it is hard to care about school when grad­u­a­tion is within reach and a new life at col­lege is only a fun-filled sum­mer away. I found myself impa­tiently count­ing the sec­onds to the end of each school day, using my 18-year-old par­ent waiver to sign myself out of Ceram­ics every other Tues­day and Thurs­day to catch Blos­som reruns at home, and zon­ing out dur­ing those last few weeks of final papers, tests and projects. My ceramic box ended up a bit lop­sided and extra glazed on one side, but my mom found it charm­ing. Even our end-of-year jazz band per­for­mance that year, in which I was the lead pianist, was anti-climactic, as I trudged through an old solo Duke Elling­ton solo I'd learned as a fresh­man. My grades remained about the same, but that last chunk of high school remains a blur.

Not unlike other college-admitted seniors, I checked out. In ret­ro­spect, this is a nat­ural reac­tion to the ebb and flow of the hier­ar­chi­cal school­ing sys­tem. A bun­dle of nerves as an enter­ing fresh­men, a mass of atro­phied flesh as an out­go­ing senior.

With hind­sight, I wish I would have been a bit more present.

Sure, I was sick of the same old build­ings and bath­room passes and faces with which I'd fared the major­ity of my teenage years, as many seniors do. Sure, I thought I knew every­thing already, as many seniors def­i­nitely know. But I could have forced myself to stay those extra 10 min­utes in a few of my classes to par­take in sign­ing more year­books. I could have actu­ally gone to the final student-run show of Com­edy Sports to let myself have some extra laughs. I could have actu­ally stud­ied for that last sta­tis­tics final to help me answer those crit­i­cal ques­tions on the AP test. I could have gone to prom.

All in all, rest­less seniors must do what they want, if only as prac­tice for the decision-making years to come. But for any seniors read­ing this post, take a moment to con­sider if and how you're rush­ing through the motions of your last few months of true free­dom of adult respon­si­bil­ity, and see if you might enjoy slow­ing down and tak­ing in the last gulps of high school before they're gone forever.

Because if you find your­self in the same posi­tion four years later as a col­lege senior, you may expe­ri­ence the com­plete oppo­site… hang­ing onto every last shred of student-dom before being thrown mer­ci­lessly into the real world of the job-hunt. To be continued.