An opinion | by SHAUGHNESSY MILLER

I was the perfect portrait of a student.  Get up, go to school, go to practice, go home, go to bed.
But lately I’ve been spending hours on my college applications and racing through my homework.  Or outside playing volleyball with my sisters till 10 p.m., only to realize it’s a school night and I still have two tests tomorrow.  Where has my lack of focus come from?
I can think of only one explanation: senioritis.
I’d heard of this not so rare disease, but never imagined it would come after me.  However, I do not have just any case of senioritis.  My particular case involves severe nostalgia and a head as full of thoughts as my belly after the Thanksgiving feast.   Thoughts, memories and emotions that continue to bombard me during the most confusing time in my life.
As the clock ticks closer to the time when I will pack my bags up and step out of my house knowing that I must become independent of my current life, I find myself turning back more and more.  I’m so excited to go to college and have my own life and my own experiences.  But then the memories of my whole childhood, life, world as I know it come back to me.  Those memories, though cloudy, remain in my mind and pull me back from the present life I’m leading and the future that’s calling my name.
On top of that, I have to remember that this is senior year.  I have so many events to attend, classmates to connect with and memories to make.  My time is slowly fading here and I know I will miss it so dearly next year.
I am coming to the intersection of past, present and future and it’s like someone is pulling me in all directions. But I have never been more confused or out of my element. I want things to change, but I also want to be the five-year-old little girl who lived in Brookside and swung on the swings of Edgevale Park.  Or the 13-year-old trying out for her first club volleyball team and making it, not knowing that this was just the beginning of a long career and love of the sport.  Or the 17-year-old at Teresian a few weeks ago failing in her attempt to do the stanky leg.  But I can’t be any of those people ever again.
It’s not that I don’t want to be in the here and now.  It’s that I am trying to be here and there and everywhere.