According to a fellow law school-bound friend, I am a risk-averse person.
I'll be the first to admit that she has a pretty good point. I've never studied abroad, I've never had a roommate for more than a summer and I've never ridden the infamous Shooters bull. Then, when I consider my plans for the next three years, her claim only becomes all the more legitimate.
I will begin law school in the fall, following the versatile yet entirely predictable path of so many Duke graduates. Not only will I obtain the most flexible advanced degree possible, but I will do so immediately after graduation. And where is my law school of choice located? New York City, where I will have access to a plethora of career opportunities and will be around most of my graduating class-just in case making new friends proves too (gasp!) risky.
Maybe I am simply keeping my options open, but the notion that I am risk-averse makes even more sense when I consider another phenomenon-I have never experienced senioritis.
Okay, now pause for a second while anyone who has witnessed me waste hours in the library zoning out on iTunes, checking my horoscope or video chatting the person next to me stops to laugh. Done yet? I didn't think so, but let me explain.
When I was in high school, I somehow escaped that virulent syndrome that affects overachievers and slackers alike, and of course it was all about risk aversion. In the back of my mind, I knew Duke just might fulfill its promise of rescinding my acceptance if I, God forbid, got an A-minus.
Granted this was all before the days of YouTube, Facebook and Gmail chat, so efficiency was much less of an upward battle, but the truth is that even as graduation approached, I still wanted to do my best. I really was that Type-A.
Four years later, the Tracy Flick in me has taken on an entirely new persona thanks to risk aversion. In high school, my risk aversion generated a fear that I would fail to maintain an academic standard. Today, it feeds on the concern that once law school (I hear it's kind of hard) and then the real world arrive, I will no longer have fun. I've made the best friends of my life in college, and I value every second I have left. Thus, I go out when I know I shouldn't, and I don't start homework when I know I should, and I waste time whenever I can because, let's face it, procrastination is fun.
Senioritis, right? Wrong.
I don't suffer from senioritis, and here's the catch: you don't either. That nagging force that draws you to Charlie's on Tuesday when you have a 10:05 a.m. midterm Wednesday isn't senioritis. We Dukies love the term "senioritis" because it makes us feel cool and lets us deny that we're really just a bunch of high school nerds in a little Gothic bubble where what is "cool" is completely relative.
Duke "senioritis" is a unique condition. It's an isolated strain of the disease driven not by apathy but instead by the same Type-A, risk-averse qualities that got you into Duke in the first place. I've witnessed three clear symptoms of our particular ailment.
First, though the stereotypical senior is characterized by a lazy, I-have-a-job-so-I-could-not-care-less attitude, senioritis at Duke is an active pursuit. Senior year is less about letting the ball drop and more about taking part in every quintessentially Duke experience that comes our way. It's risk aversion. Never again will we have the opportunity to climb the Chapel or wear obnoxious costumes to every possible event, so why risk missing out?
Second, Duke senioritis is planned... compulsively. To quote a message I received from a friend about two weeks ago, "Oh my god, Katherine, LDOC is in a week-and-a-half. We need to start coordinating our drinking schedules immediately." To fit all your aspirations into one last semester while maintaining the essential facade of a jaded senior, organization and time-management are key. Early in the semester, my friends and I made a to-do list of absolutely everything we needed to accomplish before May. But that's not all. We then created a listserv that we have used religiously to schedule dinners, plan costumes (see above) and generallyl facilitate procrastination.
Finally, Duke senioritis isn't really senioritis. Yes, we all work less than we used to. But finals are here, and now we realize that those sophomores who actually did the reading may not have been crazy, and that "honors seminar" is code for tangible "thesis," not a class you may or may not have to attend once a week. Thus, the risk-aversion sets back in. Sure we could all get Bs. But let's face it, we'll be a lot happier with As, so we beeline to Bostock, motivated only by the lure of Sati's as soon as we're finished. For me, the greatest motivation is knowing my friends are waiting in the library for me, ready to take a "break" before we've actually started working.
And that, my friends, is Duke senioritis. If you disagree, you can find me watching YouTube in first-floor Bostock. Feel free to interrupt.
Katherine MacIlwaine is a Trinity senior. She is a former University editor and current features editor of The Chronicle.
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