Dear Professors,

I know I’m behind the curve here, but I just checked my midterm grades. Whoops! As if my procrastination is not bad enough, I realize they might be the worst midterm grades I have ever received, except in 6th grade when I was routinely being tested on long division.

Given that I only have about a month to bring these bad boys up to fighting strength, it’s not looking great. But, since I am a second semester senior, and have a column in which to openly admit my struggles, I have a compromise for you to consider: Test me on things I will already be spending a significant amount of time on.

I know what you’re thinking: “No, Kelly. I will consider no such thing! But you should consider coming to my office hours.”

Fair point, professors.

But hear me out: I too have some valid points — or so fellow seniors tell me.

First of all, we are all about college right now. And college right now is all about us. So let’s start having college classes the way movies told us we would: No tests, no papers — only free-wheeling discussion on current events. This way, we keep up with the news, get to have a few more uncomfortable class arguments and the kids who usually sleep in class will have a more difficult time getting away with doing so. Classic class participation!

Or, what if we started having class outside? We could take some strolls around campus, lounge in Central Mall, maybe even try a walk to the lake for those 2-hour classes.

Not sold on the lots of talking, some walking and no written assignments idea? Fine. Test us! Take us to Caffrey’s trivia night and see how we do. Winning team gets an A. Best team name get a B. Everyone else can write a paper on something that is also trivial — of your choosing! But Wikipedia should count as a source and the paper should only have to be one page, double-spaced.

Please give us a while to do so, too, since the thing we are best at right now is procrastination. Take it from someone who is writing her column at the last possible moment, I could ace a course in procrastination.

Instead of literary analysis, we could do some television analysis. I hear “Mad Men” and “Game of Thrones” both just returned to the tube. We could analyze the content of such shows — I could especially use some help interpreting Don’s vivid fever dreams from last Sunday, and can we please talk about Sally?

I dare say, we would even be willing to do some weekend work. A college weekend is the best opportunity to do some anthropological research. Rumor has it there is an epic weekend coming up here, including the now semi-annual, multiple-house MalnoryFest, which will allow for multiple friendship groups to interact. We could go so far as to immerse ourselves in the environment, not unlike Jane Gooddall did with the chimps.

But that’s not all! We could test our math and economics by trying to balance our bank account. We could hone our psychology skills by having deep conversations with acquaintances.

We could go to mass at Gesu to complete our theology component. See, the opportunity for creativity here is endless, regardless of your subject area.

This really is in your best interest, too! Less to grade, more free time to spend on independent research or with your friends and family and away from those of us who exert little to no energy on academia.

And, if you think our workload too small, consider all the applications we are currently working on or have just finished: Jobs, internships, grad schools — sometimes all three.

Admittedly, this is a ploy — and a weak one at that — to get out of doing work that will probably benefit us in the end. So feel no need to abide by any of these suggestions. Just realize that your homework may come second to porch-sitting, out-of-class reading, brewery tours, etc.

Love,

A former good student who has succumbed to severe senioritis and has been pressured to write this article by others who feel the same way.

P.S. Don’t worry, Mom and Dad — I’m still graduating.