senioritis by CJ Q. '23

I’m up, you’re drunk
I wish I had no work today
I wish I had no work today

Still trapped, from night’s bath
You wish I had no work today
You wish I had no work today

i don’t feel like doing schoolwork anymore. not that my classes aren’t interesting, because they are! i love thinking about interpreters and category theory. but i don’t want to do actual work. i don’t want to program, i don’t want to solve problem sets. i only like thinking about it. speaking of my classes, i haven’t talked about the classes i’m taking this semester yet. i’ll talk about my three technicals:

• 6.1120 [6.818] dynamic computer language engineering. this is “make your own python”. i’m having a lot of fun thinking about interpreters, bytecode compilation, and garbage collection. i’m having fun researching what different programming language implementations do. but when it comes to actually writing c++ for our own implementation, it becomes uninteresting.
• 6.1420 [6.054] fixed parameter and fine-grained computation. a fascinating algorithms class, taught by two of the biggest names in the budding field. i only registered for the class because i saw one of the professors tweet about it and it ended up on my timeline, so that’s one positive thing i got out of twitter. as an aside, why are so many professors on twitter? best lectures i’ve been to all year, but i’m dreading the final project.
• 18.704 seminar in algebra. seminars are this mit math department contrivance where students take turns presenting topics, usually following a book. we’re going through serre’s finite groups: an introduction. it’s an interesting book, but i’m more interested in the categorical parts of the class. i’m doing a final presentation on abelian categories, and i’m reading up on a lot of fun material. but i’m not actually doing any exercises, so it doesn’t feel like i’m “learning” anything.

as you can see, the pattern is “wow the class material is interesting but i don’t want to do actual class work”. it’s not like i need to take these classes to graduate; there’s lots of choices that fulfill my remaining requirements. but the way i’m trudging along this semester feels like i’m being forced to take these classes, even though i picked them because i thought the material was interesting.

And just sleep (sleep)
Again
Let’s sleep (sleep)
Again

there’s also other things i could be doing, that are probably “better uses of my time”. i could be getting new clothes, or working on my personal projects, of which there are dozens, or writing blog posts like this. i don’t feel like doing any of those. i had to force myself to write this post, and it took way longer than it’d normally take.

it doesn’t help that i’ve gotten into gaming again. i’ve written about video games before: slay the spire, celeste, night in the woods, incremental games. recently, i finished mother 3 and the first danganronpa game, and i’m working through hades. i want to write about these, but it’ll take a while.

when i’m not playing video games, i’m not even playing board games or eating with friends or something nice like that. i’m scrolling through social media, lying in bed, wanting to take a nap even if i feel well-rested.

i’ve started drinking more and more caffeine lately. i’m sensitive to caffeine, so it doesn’t take much to give me jitters, around 120mg or so. i’m surprised i haven’t developed a tolerance yet. i’ve taken caffeine sparingly through the summer, and this fall i started drinking it almost every day. it doesn’t even wake me up or anything; i’ve taken good naps after drinking caffeine. i just do it for the thrill of having my heart race.

so that’s basically been my life these past two months or so, which is why my blog posts have been slower and more impersonal than usual. video games, sleep, twitter, youtube.

Legs locked, death’s out there waiting
I wish I had no bills to pay
I wish I had no bills to pay

Man up, to stay put
I wish I had the heart for this
I wish I had the heart for this

i feel the senioritis in non-schoolwork things too. i don’t feel like going to many of the events i’m interested in. there’s talks and outings i would’ve liked to go to, museum visits and a capella concerts, musicals and ice skatings and movie screenings, parties and mixers and other dinners—i’m sure i would’ve enjoyed these things, and if getting there wasn’t so hard maybe i would’ve gone, but gods it is so hard to get out of my room.

i didn’t get senioritis in high school, but i think i have it now. i can think of many reasons why i didn’t get it when i was a high school senior. i was dealing with a lot of family issues, i was living alone for the first time, and i knew i was taking a gap year after i graduated. that year had enough stressful things happening that schoolwork was an escape from dealing with those things. also, i knew my senior year grades would kinda end up mattering, since i was going to apply during my gap year.

college senior me is different. i’m grateful to have a return offer lined up, and i’m well on track to graduate, so i don’t have as much reason to do well on my classes. the other’s anticipation. high school senior me would’ve been more excited for his gap year if he wasn’t living alone, if he was still living with his parents and didn’t have much freedom to do what he wanted. for him, the gap year would only be different in that there’d be no schoolwork.

but now i know how different not being in mit feels like. from the day i arrived on campus freshman fall, to the day i flew to san francisco this summer for my internship, i stayed entirely in mit. during the summers, i lived on-campus and did urops or teaching or some other things. this summer was the first time i had a nine-to-five, one that i was lucky enough to enjoy. now that i’m back in school i can feel how different it all is.

I wish I had no work today
I wish I had no work today
I wish I had no work today
I wish I had no work today

I wish I had no work today
I wish I had no work today
I wish I had no work today
I wish I had no work today

I wish I had no work today
I wish I had no work today
I wish I had no work today
I wish I had no work

i’m afraid i’m in a grass-is-greener situation. i’m in college and i’m thinking that i’ll have more free time after i graduate. but once i graduate and start working, i’m afraid that i won’t be around friends anymore, like i am right now. that on either side of the fence i’ll be looking and wishing i was on the other.

the song’s cheats – sleepist. i’ve been thinking about it for weeks now. the line that gets repeated the most is “i wish i had no work today”. but the end of the second stanza is “i wish i had the heart for this”. what is “this” here? if it’s work, then we have a singer who wishes they didn’t have work, yet wishes they wanted to do the work.

that’s the clue that the song isn’t just about procrastinating due to laziness. it’s about not doing work because this motivation, this “heart for this”, isn’t there. that desire for motivation is placed in a footnote, drowned out by the repeated cries of wanting no work, confusing tiredness for dislike, effects louder than the cause. it’s easy to confuse senioritis for laziness or jadedness, but it isn’t—i think that at its heart, senioritis is burnout.