EMMA PHILBROOK: STUDENT LIFE

SYSSS.

It's the sound of air coming out of a bike tire that got a little too chummy with puncture vine. It's also the abbreviation for Senior Year Scholastic Straddling Syndrome.

This condition, which experts (all of whom, incidentally, are named Emma Philbrook) fear often goes un-or-misdiagnosed, occurs when high-school seniors, besides being loaded down with regular coursework, are forced to simultaneously begin the legwork of applying to and paying for college. This results in an odd dissociative state during which the realities of high school life are often completely forgotten.

It is fear...