It’s the fall of my senior year, and this isn’t high school.

Back in high school, the final fall of living at home marked the advent of an eight-month atmosphere comparable to the night before Christmas. Only eight more months of busywork, only eight more months of waking up at 6:30 a.m. every morning, only eight more months of having to do all the stuff everyone else wants you to do ?

Then freedom. Freedom from stupid rules, any responsibility you don’t want and — other than a few classes a week or a few hours of easy employment — any restraints on how you spend your time.

But the fall of senior year in college is not Christmas Eve, eagerly awaiting your presents the next morning; it’s more like the way Scooby-Doo might feel the night before his appointment to be neutered. You know the changes in your future are unavoidable, but you also know they’re going to be painful, limiting and a lot less fun.

I, like many seniors, felt the first tinges of the Scooby-Doo Syndrome this fall after receiving an email from the administration: “It looks like you’re going to graduate this year. Make sure you see an adviser.” I knew it was coming, but my appointment with the vet of the real world always seemed so far away and abstract. Suddenly, the date became concrete; my descent into full, responsible eunuch-hood would be complete on May 16.

Freedom from stupid rules I don’t agree with? Gone. Freedom to stay up until 4 a.m. on a weekday and then sleep until noon? Gone. The Fridays off? Gone. Summers with some joe-job that lets me go out with my friends four nights a week? Gone.

And UW administrators wonder why they have students stay here so long. As long as we stay in school, we don’t have to get old. Untapped potential and unlimited possibilities are exciting and fresh, but the task of actually making good on this potential and promise is both painful and frightening.

Don’t get me wrong: Graduation and adulthood do have some benefits. There will be no more begging for money from parents, no more digging for change in the couch to tip the pizza guy, no more settling for Milwaukee’s Best when Miller Lite is available.

But those shallow benefits don’t make graduation from college something seniors look forward to in the same way we looked forward to the end of high school. This time around, we have senioritis of a different kind: the fear of becoming old, of becoming (gasp) our parents, of having our untamed, exuberant youthful side surgically removed the moment we accept our diplomas.

Of course, entrance into the real world does not necessarily mean we will meet the same fate as Scooby, as real-life Peter Pans like Hugh Hefner show us. We don’t have to give in to nine-to-five slavery or always trade wild fun for “responsible” living. It just makes these transformations more likely.

So, for all these reasons, you won’t see college seniors gleefully counting down the days to graduation. Not all of us will be breaking down our advisers’ doors to make sure we graduate on time. Our collective D-Day with the vet is inching closer; unlike high school, don’t expect us to be wagging our tails in anticipation.

Undergraduates bombing their calculus classes may not understand these sentiments, but trust me: Love this fear-free living while you can. You’ll be falling victim to the syndrome soon enough.

— Matt Lynch ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in English and political science.