Invisible Monster
ggalang@theguidon.com

Ever since the second semester set in, I’ve been counting down the days until graduation. As I’m writing this, it’s approximately two weeks before the Christmas break and 12 weeks before the semester ends for us seniors. In no time, it’ll be us donning on togas, going up the stage, and saying goodbye to the undergraduate years.

One would think that seniors still have a chance to enjoy whatever’s left of life with no “real-life” responsibilities. It’s easy to think that we’re only concerned with maxing out cuts or doing academics for the sake of getting it over with. I’ve heard this being referred to as the senior syndrome.

This isn’t a new feeling, seeing as how this has also happened to me back in high school. My last year in a school where I spent 11 years—all I could think about then was getting away from high school naivety and moving on to college freedom.

This time, it’s different. After senior year, it’s no doubt the real world, or so people, as well as the group messages that I’ve been getting from the APO, tell me. But the illusion of 12 weeks was merely just that.

Talking to some friends, I was half-horrified, half-surprised to find that they were either looking for (or already have) jobs or scholarships to graduate courses abroad. I’ve been led to believe that job paranoia won’t kick in until I’m sure that I’ll graduate. Where was the fun and easy semester that we were supposed to have?

So there I was, influenced by those who I know are spending their MWF schedules on jobs and packing their TTh with subjects. I tried to look in the Internet, where, as my friend told me, everything and more can be found. I opted to go with relatively feasible jobs, such as part-time article writers or even as a transcriptionist, thinking that I may have an edge even if I was still an undergrad.

That was almost a month ago. I did get two callbacks—one for a transcriptionist position which I didn’t get because they weren’t looking for a part-timer, and the other for a copyeditor position in Makati but because of the one-month training involved, I couldn’t work it out just yet, thanks to my academic schedule.

This threw me off with two new fears: I’ve seen firsthand just how hard the competition really is, even for jobs that we take for granted, and I realized that I’m still too bound by my academic obligations to get good grades for a clean transcript.

It got me doubting whether I should just wait until I’m out of school so I can focus on work. After all, what difference can 12 more weeks do?

But after talking to a certain model who has had careers since she was 16, I realized the true meaning of senior syndrome. Vicky Herrera had told me in an interview, “You’re a senior, right? If I were you, I wouldn’t think about grades anymore. When you graduate, you’re not gonna get an A, B, or C—you get a salary or you get a probation.”

She made sense, all right. It’s never too early to start worrying about the real world, especially not for someone who’s about to graduate. Even she wished she did more jobs while she was still in school.

Maybe it’s about time I start suffering from the real senior syndrome. It’s about time I start picturing myself outside the comforts of the school, since it will be truly gone before I can even say ‘job hunting.’