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By Brittany Wright
I have finally reached my final semester here at York. It is bittersweet but I am definitely ready to go. Getting to this place has been a long journey. A trail of blood, sweat, and tears had brought me right here, to this point. Okay, maybe that was a little much. But definitely a lot of sleepless nights, rough finals, and last minute assignments.
Currently, I am finishing up my last 15 credits and I seemed to have come down with a case of “senioritis”. I’m not too sure who coined the term but it’s that lazy you get as a senior when you’re so close to finishing and so close to giving up all the same time.
Every morning when my alarm goes off I have to give myself a pep talk, “Brittany, get up. If you don’t go you’ll fail in life.” After the five-minute self- motivation, I get up and get a move on.
This semester I’m taking four classes, doing an internship and also working 2 jobs, so I don’t have free time and barely have any time to sleep. But it’ll all pays off eventually, right? Well that’s a part of what I tell myself in my daily wake up speech anyway.
But besides trying to find the energy to have energy I have found some things to help me battle my senioritis.
I actually have a wall full of post-its in my room, with inspirational quotes. I read them aloud sometimes when I need some extra motivation. You’d be surprised how reading positivity can actually influence you.
Listening to music as you start your day can also help— not the slow depressing stuff though.
At some point we all take a class that we just take because we need an extra elective. Well I have a major and two minors and after meeting the requirements for them all, I was still left three credits short of the required 120 for graduation.
To make up my missing credits I decided to take an online Anthropology 101 class, because it was the only thing that fit in my schedule. Mistake! I’m not sure what in my mind made me think that anthropology would be an “easy” class or a class that I could just breeze through, but it’s definitely not.
Quick word of advice that I should’ve given myself a month ago: At least read the class description before you register for them. Because honestly I wasn’t even sure what anthropology meant before taking this class.
So here I am three weeks into the class and I’ve already had to do so much study, an exam, and a project (that took a lot of time and effort)- just for this class! Why me?! But you live and you learn.
I’m one of those people that need to be mentally stimulated in order to retain information. I try to find something interesting or intriguing about the classes I take. Being interested will make doing well not seem like such a hard task. Also setting a short-term goal can help. Setting specific goals about assignments, exams, and projects is also can help with staying focused.
You may be like me feeling lazy and overwhelmed but just think it will all be over in a few months. Plus wouldn’t it be great to end this chapter of your life on a good term.
I’m just trying to take this semester as it comes, one day at a time.