Time until graduation: 7 months, 4 weeks, 1 day.

Just short of a month into my senior year, I’ve “”got the black lung, pop.”” Proverbially speaking, anyway. Current estimates put my “”motivation to go to class”” levels at 45 percent, while my “”enthusiasm to graduate”” levels have bottomed out at a mostly neutral 24 percent.

It probably wouldn’t have even registered for me if a professor in an upper division class hadn’t specifically warned us about “”avoiding senioritis”” and “”not just doing the bare minimum.””

I find it extremely curious that the academic infrastructure, perhaps in fear of its own ego, attempts to dictate a “”correct”” senior year experience. They advise us not to cram and not to skim.

They ask us to fulfill our holy obligations to the avaricious god Homework on a nightly basis with the scrutiny and abstinence of monks.

Gross. Besides, I’m more than willing to defend my senioritis, and I encourage you to do the same. Here’s some help.

1. Relax, perfectionist tendencies are unhealthy: Consistent, organized and meticulous behavior will end up making you hate yourself. According to an August article from Psychology Today, “”Perfectionists may veer wildly from arrogance to self-hatred and back,”” and “”Not all perfectionists do well in the world. Sometimes they’re slow workers, procrastinating and second-guessing themselves.””

In short, embrace the Type-B personality within you. No one gets to tell you what makes you happy but you.

2. Stop reading, start skimming: The academic lifestyle isn’t going to be all that helpful once we get out of here. Management strategies like “”Six Sigma”” or “”Lean”” (developed by Motorola and Toyota respectively), the kind of work philosophies we are likely to encounter in the workforce, encourage reductions of waste and variables in production.

You can get a head start on the rest of the pack by applying those principals to your schoolwork. If you figure out how to get a good grade on a paper by reading 30 select pages of Moby Dick instead of the whole thing, don’t feel ashamed. Feel proud. You just did some adult work.

3. Your syllabus told you to do it: The total work you actually need to do to get a good grade in the class is usually listed, often with helpful calculations, on that piece of paper they hand out on the first day of class. Why do more than you need to? After all, a 100 percent looks identical on your transcript to a 90 percent, and that’s 10 percent of time you could have spent doing something fun.

4. This is all practice for making other important lifestyle choices: I sincerely recommend you take some time to make a firm account of what you want out of your senior year. Write it all down, and you’ll see how many of the expectations from your professors, your parents and President Barack Obama become periphery sources of stress you can start ignoring a little more. You’re an adult, right?

So start acting like an autonomous body and do whatever you want, as long as you’re successful at it.

Just a friendly suggestion of perspective; put away your textbook and find some way to relax. Did you know they still play Jeopardy every day at 4:30 p.m.? KGUN9 is on your side, finally.

— Remy Albillar is a senior majoring in English and creative writing. He can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu.