Orcas Islands’ case of senioritis was so severe this year that it left many bedridden on day one. Waking up on the morning of September 7th, the sheer horror of going back to school caused many students to convulse in severe coughing fits followed by urges to violently bang their heads on their bedroom doors.
After dragging themselves out of their rooms, seniors’ brains went into autopilot, and by the time they made it to school, they had no recollection of the rest of their mornings. Mr. Freeman made sure to greet everyone with a remarkably cheerful smile, afterward issuing a welcoming statement that students’ semiconscious brains could only process as unintelligible rambling, similar to the teacher’s voices in Charlie Brown.
By second period, most students had either fallen into a coma at their desks or ran to the bathrooms with flu symptoms. One student was afflicted so intensely that they fell into a mental
episode, causing them to repeatedly write “I forgot how to write” in their notebook over 300 times.
To outsiders observing the seniors’ conditions, many appeared to have glazed eyes, uncontrolled walking patterns, and slurred speech. The day finally started to look up by their
lunches and free periods, when they were overcome with an insatiable appetite and then proceeded to purchase Island Markets’ entire supply of Takis and Top Ramen.
After lunch only half of the students ended up returning to school, the other half were reportedly found passed out at beaches and under trees and park benches. The day ended with drastically slowed motor control on the seniors’ homeward drives, causing traffic jamsvwhere there had never been traffic jams before.
The rest of September showed students seemingly steady recoveries to a normal mental and physical health level, but once an October full of college applications and abnormally hot weather rolled around it started all over again.
To the seniors, a three week period with temperatures 10 degrees above the yearly average felt like a four month period in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Beads of sweat dripped down their faces and drenched multiple keyboards as they attempted to write personal statements and research universities. Calls to admissions offices frequently turned into violent shouting matches and begging fits for acceptance. Seeing all the commotion on Orcas, Jay Inslee attempted to mandate masks again because the Seniors’ physical conditions looked so bad.