Editorial: Senior Limbo
Dublin Core
Title
Editorial: Senior Limbo
Subject
Student newspapers and periodicals
Student newspaper and periodical editors
Description
An account of why seniors are stressed out and not themselves during their final semester.
Creator
Mello, Michael A.
Source
Mello, Michael A. "Editorial: Senior Limbo." The Bullet (VA), April 3, 1979.
Publisher
HIST 298, University of Mary Washington
Date
1979-04-03
Rights
The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source.
Format
2 JPEG
300 dpi
Language
English
Coverage
Fredericksburg, VA
Text Item Type Metadata
Text
The phenomenon which is the subject of this editorial has variously been called "senior slump," "senior-itis" and "senior fever." But, it seems to me that the best term for this particular malady is "senior limbo:" an intermediate state, characterized by uncertainty, between two mediums. The malaise is not peculiar to seniors alone, though there appears to be a consensus among medical authorities that its most virulent strains usually strike down students with less than half-a-semester to go at Mary Washington College.
Senior limbo has two distinctive aspects. On the one hand, there is an alienation and a sense of detachment from the larger College community. The academics and extra-curricular activities that recently consumed so much of our attention, now somehow seem... well, small, distant and irrelevant. At least irrelevant and small in comparison to the uncertainty of the immediate future.
This sense of uncertainty, which is the second dominant aspect of senior limbo, accentuates and feeds the students' alienation from the College. Gradually, as the semester grinds inexorably forward, many seniors become increasingly aware that they do not really know what direction their lives are going to take for the nest few years. For some, the commanding questions revolve around the state of the job market. Where will I be working this time next year? What will I be doing? Will i be working in the fields I studied at Mary Washington? Did MWC really prepare me for the "real world?"
For others, the questions and uncertainties cluster around graduate school. Will I get into the one I want? Will I get into any? Can I make it if I do get in? These students are members of what might be called the Cult of the Post Office; they visit the small, squat, red brick building across the road from Seacobeck with a frequency exceeded only by first-semester freshmen. The more hard-core of these seniors have checked and know that all first-class mail is usually in the boxes by 10:30; consequently, they often check their own box six or seven before that magic deadline. And they know the results of their grad school applications at a glance: a fat letter means an aceptance, a thin envelope means either a rejection or a waiting list. A "waiting list" means that the applicant might be admitted to the University if some of those who were accepted turn down the school; in other words, you're only offered a spot if someone else doesn't want it.
Waiting lists are special limbos unto themselves. Gary Trudeau, creator of Doonesbury(ITALICS), captured the essence of this feeling in a dialogue that took place between Joanie Caucus(who was applying to law school) and Zonker Harris:
ZONKER: Joanie, you can't just spend all day in bed, moping over your law school waiting lists. You've got to get up and around.
JOANIE: No! I've got nothing to get up for.
ZONKER: Well, could I bring you something to eat? Soup, maybe?
JOANIE: No, I don't want anything to eat. All I want to do is WAIT. They put me on their waiting lists, so I'm going to start waiting up a storm. Wait! Wait! Wait!
ZONKER: OK.
JOANIE: Check back in a week.
The specifics of senior limbo vary from person to person, but the elements of alienation and uncertainty appear fairly constant. The relative security and predictability of College is about to rudely end, to be replaced by...
Senior limbo has two distinctive aspects. On the one hand, there is an alienation and a sense of detachment from the larger College community. The academics and extra-curricular activities that recently consumed so much of our attention, now somehow seem... well, small, distant and irrelevant. At least irrelevant and small in comparison to the uncertainty of the immediate future.
This sense of uncertainty, which is the second dominant aspect of senior limbo, accentuates and feeds the students' alienation from the College. Gradually, as the semester grinds inexorably forward, many seniors become increasingly aware that they do not really know what direction their lives are going to take for the nest few years. For some, the commanding questions revolve around the state of the job market. Where will I be working this time next year? What will I be doing? Will i be working in the fields I studied at Mary Washington? Did MWC really prepare me for the "real world?"
For others, the questions and uncertainties cluster around graduate school. Will I get into the one I want? Will I get into any? Can I make it if I do get in? These students are members of what might be called the Cult of the Post Office; they visit the small, squat, red brick building across the road from Seacobeck with a frequency exceeded only by first-semester freshmen. The more hard-core of these seniors have checked and know that all first-class mail is usually in the boxes by 10:30; consequently, they often check their own box six or seven before that magic deadline. And they know the results of their grad school applications at a glance: a fat letter means an aceptance, a thin envelope means either a rejection or a waiting list. A "waiting list" means that the applicant might be admitted to the University if some of those who were accepted turn down the school; in other words, you're only offered a spot if someone else doesn't want it.
Waiting lists are special limbos unto themselves. Gary Trudeau, creator of Doonesbury(ITALICS), captured the essence of this feeling in a dialogue that took place between Joanie Caucus(who was applying to law school) and Zonker Harris:
ZONKER: Joanie, you can't just spend all day in bed, moping over your law school waiting lists. You've got to get up and around.
JOANIE: No! I've got nothing to get up for.
ZONKER: Well, could I bring you something to eat? Soup, maybe?
JOANIE: No, I don't want anything to eat. All I want to do is WAIT. They put me on their waiting lists, so I'm going to start waiting up a storm. Wait! Wait! Wait!
ZONKER: OK.
JOANIE: Check back in a week.
The specifics of senior limbo vary from person to person, but the elements of alienation and uncertainty appear fairly constant. The relative security and predictability of College is about to rudely end, to be replaced by...
Original Format
Newspaper
Contributor of the Digital Item
Houston, Tyler
Student Editor of the Digital Item
Williams, Megan
Files
Citation
Mello, Michael A., “Editorial: Senior Limbo,” HIST299, accessed March 12, 2026, https://hist299.umwhistory.org/items/show/82.