Senioritis: It's back...again

Knapp: Get off the floor, Andy.
Me: (in typical overdramatic fashion) Why , Jim? Why should I get off the floor? What do I have better to do than lie on this floor and wait to die?
Knapp: (in typical absolutely unsympathetic fashion) Get off the floor! You're not helping yourself. You've got stuff to do!
Me: (still overdramatic) I can give you more reasons to join me, exhausted, on the floor, than you can give me to get up and go on.
Knapp: (rolls eyes, and walks away - I think he knew he was defeated.)

This scene followed my collapse last year, my fourth year at Wright State. Sick of work, tired of 2 consecutive quarters of 20 credit hours, and exhausted from meetings and readings, I just quit last spring. I didn't completely mean to collapse in the living room. I had almost made it to my bedroom; I was as far as Sids (name of the one-armed couch in the living room.) That's when I made the decision - to collapse. What did it matter if I made the three more steps to my bedroom? Did it really make a difference if I collapsed on my bed, or if I collapsed publicly in the living room. Besides, it makes more of a statement if I collapse in front of someone.

Ahhh, senioritis. That was the second time I had had it in my life. Everyone remembers it from high school. The feeling of "why should I do that?" This time it was worse. College senioritis is infinitely more brutal than high school senioritis. Fortunately, after many mornings of tears shed over the thought of starting another day, after unfathomable gallons of coffee dumped into my stomach and bloodstream, and after a few books that managed to find themselves flying into my bedroom wall after I had completed them (Ragtime, Modern Jewish Thought, Une Si Longue Lettre, The Clown, and about a hundred books on Canadian Indians) I did survive my second installment of senioritis.

Unfortunately, senioritis is a bit like most incurable diseases. It never really goes away, though from time to time it may go into remission. The only way to get rid of such diseases is to die. Hmmm...a little like sin when you think of it, but someone else can post on that one...I'm busy ranting about senioritis.

So here I am, completing my fifth and final year as an undergraduate in France, with the disease coming back. Why is it so ugly this time? Two reasons, and I've already answered them.
1) I'm a super-senior, therefore, I have Super-Senioritis.
2) (and this is the most complicated one) I'm in France. It's easy to give up in your own language. Any idiot, slacker, or senior can do that. As an American, even my incoherent, drueling babble often resembles some kind of sensible English construction. Here, if I just start babbling (much as I am now), it will make even less sense to these poor francophones than it does to you. Plus, one of the symptoms of senioritis is a sluggishness of thought. Well, it takes a lot of thought to function in a foreign language. So it's either rebel against the demands of this seductively lazy illness, flee to the American Embassy, where maybe there will be other babbling, drueling, incoherent, 5th year students in a coma-like state, or die from lack of being able to contend for food in a non-English society.
France and senioritis might turn out to be a deadly combination. French culture will not help. One of the rules of playing the French game (ie. French culture) is do your best to try not to notice the people around you. I'm learning well, but the French have got it mastered. Therefore, if I collapse in a scene resembling last spring, I'm likely to get trampled to death - not because the French are mean people, but because they will die and take anyone with them before they give up playing the game. Such is French culture.
It appears, since both death options seem to be rather painful, that I will go on living. I have hope that someday senioritis will pass me by, or at least someday it will be a man and kill me itself, rather than having French people do the dirty work for it. Either way, I will go on as long as I can...but I'm thinking of surviving it on my own terms...

What does that mean?
Be warned France. I'm done playing your game! I will be THAT AMERICAN. The one who doesn't speak French except a few completely usesless phrases, such as parlez-vous français, and fois gras. I will be that American that speaks so loudly that the eardrums of everyone in the room burst. I will eat my french fries with my hands, and I'll probably lick my fingers afterwards. I'm going to constantly babble on about patriotism. I'm going to buy a poster of George W. and lay flowers just beneath it every day. I will wear white tennis shoes with EVERYTHING. I will refuse to try to understand your ridiculous movies. Why, you ask? Well France, let me tell you. I'm an American. I'm a 5th year senior. Add those two together and what do you get. Total and comlete apathy. I do this, because it's easier.
The glorious freedom of super-senioritis.