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Is Senioritis Real?

 

It’s that time of year again. AP exams are over, you’ve been accepted into college, and graduation is only weeks away.

Your motivation drops and your drive to do just about anything disappears.

At this point it is probably safe to diagnose you with…senioritis.

Over the years this term has grown with its usage and more and more high school kids use it to define the end of the year laziness before graduation.

While it is now seen as a real issue, it is far from a disease to be diagnosed by a doctor. There is often the question however, is it real or is it just a term defined by teens?

Woodland senior, Steve McCusker, said, “It’s the only logical explanation to the decline in senior’s motivation to do school work in general.”

Senior, Sarah Parker, agrees and said, “I do think it’s real. Most seniors start to slack off because they’ve been accepted to college or know what they’re going to be doing once they get out of high school. There’s no more incentive to work extra hard.”

Some would argue that senioritis is a bad habit and students need to work hard all year round every year.

However, when you are a senior in high school you have put weeks and months and endless hours into your studies.

You have worked to be the best student, or the best athlete, or the musician or artist in hopes for a good future.

And now you have been promised a future. All that hard work that you put to get you where you are has worked, so it seems right to take a little bit of a break from all the hard work. senioritis_graphic-01

“After spending several late nights working on projects, and resigning to bed around 12:30 or 1 a.m. on a daily basis, there was a threshold where I just decided that enough was enough,” said senior, Chris Zmuda. “I still do the work, but the feeling of loving the late nights and new topics is gone. After the AP exams, I felt like I could let it all go, and now all I do during school is projects and play Uno in study.”

So maybe Zmuda has the right idea. Maybe seniors deserve a break and as long as they still do the work required of them, it is okay if they don’t put forth as much effort.

Both Zmuda and Parker agree that if it gets to the point of skipping school or refusing to work then it is a problem. School is nonetheless still important.

NY Times did an article on why senioritis is bad, and among those reasons were things like colleges are watching, and they can take back their acceptance.

While all this remains true there is another aspect to senioritis that is often unexplored. By the end of your senior year you are only months away of moving out and living on your own.

With this comes a sense of independence and responsibility. Seniors have to learn to let go of their high school responsibilities as they prepare to take on new ones.

So maybe in a sense senioritis allows students to detach from the high school setting and look forward to new things. senioritis poster

So regardless, senioritis should not become an excuse to never go to school and to get kicked out of college.

However, everyone needs a break and maybe this is just how seniors take theirs break before they go off to something new.

One thought on “Is Senioritis Real?

  1. Megan May 29, 2013 at 11:55 am

    Nice work on the article! (:

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