BY MICHAEL NEWCOMER, Tarpon Springs High

There’s really no reason to sugarcoat it: I’m lazy as hell.

I could find fulfillment in life as a cat, sleeping 18 hours a day. Trust me, if feline transformation were possible, I would contact the vet.

My condition is not just a procrastination issue. It’s not as if I wait until the last minute to do something and then, you know, get it done; I just don’t do it.

It was way late in high school, like just a month ago, that I finally figured out the madness to my method: Making excuses for not doing things. For example, how can I get my project done when I have to feed the dog and get creamer from the grocery store? Yeah, it got that bad.

When I started high school, Freshman Michael was an idealistic, impish, striving version of myself. I doubled up on math and foreign language credits, imagining myself at the top of my class, maybe even giving a speech at graduation.  Cut to today and my 2.7 unweighted GPA. I don’t think I was ever afflicted with senioritis. I have a more severe malady, the “I-now-have-a-driver’s-license-and-am-not-forced-to-stay-here-anymore-itis.” Sure it’s a mouthful, just like my current transcript: FADAFFCABAB.

My attendance record has more holes than Swiss cheese. I applied to about 10 colleges and got into two. It wasn’t just the Ivy Leaguers that said no. UCF and FSU were among the rejection pile. My saving grace was good test scores: 31 ACT and 2050 SAT, tiny golden nuggets of success.
By now you’re probably thinking, “Well, reading about your failures is riveting!” However, there is a point, and here it is. I’ve been carried throughout a lot of my academic life by small miracles. I’ve skated by doing the bare minimum. Okay, maybe less than that. However, only when my guidance counselor wrote me an email to warn I was “at risk of not graduating” did I realize that nothing was going to save me but myself. There was no magic wand I could wave to receive a good grade, except for maybe my own pencil across paper.

So I did what I had to do. I stayed up late to finish papers, and for the first time in my life, I cracked open the books and studied. Epiphany after epiphany (not the cross-diving kind) washed over me as I realized how simple it was. I was cranking out papers of hundreds of words in less than an hour, and I still had time to do the things I wanted to do. I’m now proud to say that I will be graduating with the Class of 2012 at Tarpon Springs High on June 7.

I’m not saying that when I’m in college, I’ll be Mr. Magna Cum Laude. I’m smart enough to know better at this point; laziness is a gene that’s present in every cell of my body. However, I won’t be so stupid to dig myself into a hole like I did in high school.

I know this is common sense to 95 percent of high school students, but hey, to the 5 percent of you boneheads out there (I say that with affection), please let me be a lesson.  High school really does go by in the blink of an eye, and when you open that eye up again, you might be facing a mountain of rejection letters.

It’s up to you what you do with your time in life. Watching videos of Anderson Cooper giggle like a schoolgirl on Youtube is not the wise choice.