{"id":325,"date":"2015-11-19T16:23:23","date_gmt":"2015-11-19T21:23:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/acutabove.wpengine.com\/?p=325"},"modified":"2015-12-03T15:36:18","modified_gmt":"2015-12-03T20:36:18","slug":"senioritis-takes-over-class-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/?p=325","title":{"rendered":"Senioritis takes over class ’14"},"content":{"rendered":"

A.J. Prisciandaro<\/strong>
\nThe Talon
\nRochester HS
\n1st Place
\nDivision 2, News Writing
\nPersonal Narrative<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It hit me like a hundred-pound textbook had fallen on my head. My first three years of high school had seemed so easy \u2026 sure, there was a late or missing assignment here and there, an occasional poor grade on a test \u2026 but every day I had the drive to put effort into my school work, and that\u2019s what mattered. It showed in my grades and my admission to the college I wanted to attend.<\/p>\n

But then something happened I can\u2019t explain. A few months into my senior year, not long after the news broke of my letter of acceptance, that same drive, that willingness to pay attention in class, to get my homework done each night, to study for my tests \u2026 just seemed to vanish. I have no idea where it went. Instead, a dark force drifted into my classroom every hour, swirling around my head and not letting me focus on my work. I swear, I tried to listen to my teachers\u2019 lessons, but their voices just sounded like gibberish through the foggy cloud, forcing me to turn and talk with my classmates all hour.<\/p>\n

Things took a turn for the worse. I was becoming forgetful and unorganized. One day I looked into my backpack to find that I had been using a single folder to hold the papers for all my classes. There were homework assignments that I was supposed to turn in that I had never heard the teacher speak of before. When I did attempt to do my homework, it was no use. The words on the page seemed to dance in circles around my vision. One time I was convinced that my math assignment was my foreign language homework. I couldn\u2019t focus on it unless I had my music blasting in my ear, and when I had my music playing, I just got distracted with my music which in turn got me distracted with the internet. The dark force would softly whisper softly in my ear sometimes when I was sitting down, \u201cJust go watch Netfliiiiiiiix\u2026,\u201d or \u201cHow \u2018bout you get some sleep and copy this from someone tomorrow?\u201d<\/p>\n

The nightmare continued as my grades dropped. In school, all the apps on my phone just seemed to taunt me. There were tweets to look at, photos to check out and messages to send. The app store kept churning out addicting, new games. I would open Snapchat, close it, then reopen it 10 seconds later and there would be, like, 20 new stories I had to watch. The weirdest thing was that I felt so drained of enthusiasm and focus whenever I tried to do schoolwork, but whenever I was around my friends I was happy and full of energy. What could possibly be happening to me? It was like a virus had taken control of my academic life.<\/p>\n

Then I heard the mention of it in the hallway one day. It was just in passing of some random teachers, but I heard the word clearly come out of one of their mouths- \u201c\u2026 senioritis.\u201d I was intrigued. I looked it up on WebMD — no results. I called my doctor and asked him about it. He just hung up the phone on me. That\u2019s when it occurred to me to ask my friends if they were experiencing the same crazy symptoms that I was. It was a longshot \u2026 but it turned out that it was happening to them too. In fact, after more inquiring, it seemed the entire senior class had caught a case\u00a0of this deadly sickness. It was a pandemic.<\/p>\n

As of now, nobody knows a cure — all I can tell you is that it\u2019s getting worse. The week before Spring break was the most harmful I\u2019ve ever felt it. I can\u2019t figure out why it\u2019s just the seniors who have this and not the other grades. Maybe it spread to us\u00a0from last year\u2019s senior class, I don\u2019t know. So current juniors, I\u2019ll leave you with a warning. Is senior year still fun? Yes. Is this ungodly virus going to ruin your future? Only if you\u2019re that one person who will maybe catch a horrible case of it. You just have to learn to live with it \u2026 because it\u2019s unstoppable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A.J. Prisciandaro The Talon Rochester HS 1st Place Division 2, News Writing Personal Narrative<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,62],"tags":[48,21],"class_list":["post-325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-nw","category-personalnarrative","tag-48","tag-division2","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Kelsey Parkinson","author_link":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/?author=3"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6K0n6-5f","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}