We called it senioritis. That sudden change of excitement to dread as seniors realize they are going to be separated from the peer group they’re mostly been with for years at their local school and now have to go out and make something of themselves on a new, unfamiliar environment.
"Senioritis" usually describes people who have checked out because they have a short amount of time left and have already received college admissions, so their grades don't matter much.
He's joking bc senioritis usually refers to when people lose the will to work as hard (usually because they've already been accepted by either a job or a college). I assume the other part was about how southerners pussyfoot around the civil war instead of calling it what it is. I really don't know where the vitriol came from tho.