After all, it was arrogant to think I'd be immune - to assert in confidence that the illness would not claim me. "Pshaw, senioritis!" I said to myself at the commencement of the year. "Even during the last weeks of April, even when my classes begin to review for exams, even when I know at which college I have enrolled, I will still continue doing schoolwork with the same effort as in the spring of junior year!"
Yet now we are amidst the final weeks of April. Now my teachers have begun exam review, and now I know which college I will attend. Now, also, I am quite humbled - for I have succumbed to that disease, senioritis, and once again I find that I overestimated my own powers.
Once again - for this situation is a recurring theme with me. All too often do I evaluate my resources of knowledge, endurance, or self-discipline as much higher than they actually are - as three-digit numbers when they are really only fractions (or even negatives).
It is a fine line to walk between knowledge of the extent (or lack) of one's abilities and overestimation of those abilities. My high school years have been replete with the latter - all too often has an overly high self-opinion left me with a poor test grade after insufficient studying or sleepless night after rampant procrastination.
Yet high school has taught me much about the former as well - about what I am truly able to do (not much, especially after studying Shakespeare and Da Vinci) and in which areas I need improvement (many, when one considers George Washington and Isaac Newton.)
Is knowing yourself, as some assert, merely a natural consequence of physical growth? Perhaps on some level: as I gained in years, the fact that I could never be a professional athlete became glaringly clearer. But does knowing yourself contain an intentional element as well? A deliberate effort to honestly evaluate your abilities, avoiding overestimation?
I know that I will not always succeed as I strive to honestly evaluate myself in future years. I am still as prone to overestimation as ever - and I know it will haunt me in college. But I also know that living on my own will force me to confront my supposed strengths and weaknesses. It will force me to know myself better. And perhaps this will show me where I can be of the most help in this wide, wide world -
If I can ever shake this senioritis.