There is a time during the last months of primary (also known as required) education. It takes place when the leaves are growing anew, shaking off the frozen February dew, when flowers bud and struggle from the bonds of Winter's icy breath.
It is during this time that young scholars everywhere, specifically those in their final year of high school, are prone to a peculiar and medically inexplicable disease. Their eyes begin to blur over at large amounts of academic text, they ruffle their figurative feathers and squirm in the constricting confines of the classroom, and their attentions wander from chalkboards (which exist only in small quantities, having been largely replaced in the late 1990's by the more convenient and sanitary white boards) and progress onto windows, beyond which lie beautiful and wondrous greenery, tempting students beyond imagination. Physicians and school teachers alike cannot completely comprehend how the virus spreads, but spread it does. It takes but a single light-headed, unfocused, window-gazing student at but a single desk and, in but a few hours, the remainder of the class is infected. Within days less and less homework is being turned in, students begin to arrive late, students can no longer be counted upon to answer question in class, and- ultimately- grades begin to slip.
For centuries, Senioritus has baffled and befuddled doctors and scholars alike, great minds have toyed with the idea of the ancient virus, unable to wrap their heads around it. Etymologists theorize that it's the work of a small, orange bug that spreads the virus as a result of a penchant for ripe blood, biologists believe that the temporary affliction is merely an effect of the brain transitioning from youth to legal adulthood, while others maintain that it has to do with the approaching summer and ultimate freedom, now closer to a student's grasp than ever before. Nevertheless, Senioritus is a very real problem within American high schools, as any principal, teacher, or teacher's assistant will tell you.
In recent years, the victims of the plague themselves have developed (within secretive groups) a new, not yet FDA, school, or parent-approved cure, tentatively entitled "Senior Ditch Day." Though the treatment's title is somewhat misleading, as there are no plots or ditches being dug so far as researchers can detect, it seems to be effective in eliminating Senioritus almost completely from the teenage body. SDD, or "The Games," as the new cure's being refereed to in order to mislead authority figures who may find Senior Ditch Day "immoral" or "against the rules," (more news on what, exactly, the rules are at eleven)seems to consist of the members of an entire twelfth grade class, from the Yearbook's chief editor to the president of ASB, simply not showing up to school. These few hours of extra sleep coupled with the resulting giddiness of participating in a pre-planned, class-organized "sick" day seem to provide most seniors immune systems with the boost they require to kick even the worst case of Senioritus completely.
Some classes are attempting the avant-garde in planning "fun" events away from schools in order to promote a sense of unity and support for participators in the relatively new treatment. For instance, Pomona's own International Polytechnic High School put a bright twist on what some parents and most school boards have deemed an "irksome" and "quite possibly dangerous to the academic instructor's delicate psyche" cure for the horrid pandemic, by creating a one-day healing program for victims of the blight through physical therapy where students who refused to attend school this Wednesday (much to the shock of several uninformed teachers, though not including a certain mathematics instructor who offered, when he caught wind of students subjecting themselves to the unapproved cure, an extra credit "simple as pi" math quiz in hopes of luring frightened students away from any hasty treatment options.)and instead visited a nearby ice-skating rink in which they giggled at worried texts received from underclassman, complained loudly but nonetheless enjoyed themselves when falling on the harder-than-concrete-cold-as-a-witch's-you-know-what ice, and outright laughed when informed that parents had, in fact, been notified of their wave of absences.
"My mom already knows I'm here... What are they gonna do?" Chuckled one unidentified senior, who was met with a chorus of agreeances and she skated away, starting what would soon become a fully-fledged ice-skating train.
"This is just what I needed, especially after focusing so much on my senior project." Added another anonymous twelfth-grader, nodding in time to the hip music blaring from the rink's above speakers.
Though few results can be compiled by medical examiners so soon after the risky treatment has been administered, informed teachers have reported that they will be on the lookout for signs that the much-feared Senioritus has abated in the student body- that is, until next year...
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