A glance inside senior classrooms proves that senioritis exists. Students are working on math during English, economics during math, or maybe even just sleeping.
According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, senioritis is defined as “an ebbing of motivation and effort by school seniors as evidenced by tardiness, absences, and lower grades,” or in different words, they don’t want to do work.
“Kids are just tired of school,” college and career counselor Julie Johnson said. “I think they’re ready to move on. Even though they’re not mature, they think they are.”
Senior Aamna Zaidi has had senioritis since the first day of school.
“I haven’t made up a test that was like, a month ago,” Zaidi said. “I enjoy being a senior, but sometimes it’s frustrating, because you need to do your homework, but you’re like, ‘No! I want to go outside and stare at the sky!'”
Although Zaidi has not tried it herself, she believes that with persistence, seniors can beat senioritis.
“If you actually try, you can do it,” Zaidi said.
Senior Cameron Liss has had senioritis “all year” and in his eyes, graduation is the only cure.
A common misconception with seniors is that colleges don’t look at the final six weeks of senior year, and if so, why bother trying to keep good grades?
Johnson says that colleges do look, though.
“They look to see if you graduated,” Johnson said. “They look to see if you just bombed out the last six weeks and they can deny admission.”
Johnson says that she has never seen a college deny admission due to the last six weeks.
“But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen,” Johnson said.
Students who blow off classes might not be denied admission to college, but they could find themselves doing more school than had they not slacked off.
“English 4 seems to be the big class they get senioritis in,” Johnson said. “Students that are blowing off English 4 have to go to night school. If there’s no way they can pass, we help them enroll.”
The only way Johnson sees preventing senioritis is ending school in March.
“No finals, just announce one day that seniors don’t have to come come back until graduation,” Johnson said. “There’s really no way to get people to not have senioritis. It shows you’re ready to move on.”