WOODBURY – Senioritis: the casual term for loss of motivation and lack of academic disengagement. This contagion broadly defines how seniors feel as they are nearing graduation, being driven by burnout but also anticipation for the future of their next step of life approaches.
It’s almost a stuck feeling. Feeling like “when am I ever going to get out of here” or “it feels like I’ve been here forever.”
Since I’ve gotten back to school from winter break, I’ve heard all my friends talking about getting their first wave of senioritis. It’s contagious and highly threatening to the wellbeing of the senior class.
I look at it in the way that winter break and upcoming spring break feel almost like a taste or a sneak peak of what it’s going to be like not going to school. Which was really nice until you’re back to your same repetitive schedule. Every. Single. Week.
“I definitely see a decline especially after the mid part of the season [winter] even though this year we don’t have midterms,” said Marisa Holtman, English faculty member. “I still notice kids start to get more sluggish or careless in a way and some use it as a time to dial in on their work.”
So if you are that large group that starts to slack off, yes, your teachers know.
“For a lot of us students, it’s just a draining mindset and makes us do less work. And since we’ve been here for four years we are eager to get out and start our lives,” NHS senior Mariah Manzano said. “Overall, I’m just done with high school and the last thing I need to feel is worry about my grades and assignments and having pressure to think about my future and just want some time to just live.”
It’s hard to disagree with what Manzano said, especially the ‘worrying about grades and assignments because every student is done hearing about that.
“I have a plan after high school,” said Seamus Ryan, fellow NHS senior. “There’s no point in being here to me. And it’s not necessarily draining but it’s holding me back from doing other things for my future career and life that doesn’t involve high school.”
The feeling of being somewhere you don’t want to be is excruciating, demeaning, exhausting. But it’s a fact of life.
“Students see the light of graduation and they think that the heavy load of their work is behind them and start to slack off on their work even though they are still enrolled. Then after the second semester hits they start to find classes that they can drop to do the bare minimum.” Kathy Green, career-college counselor said.
With months left until June’s graduation, NHS faculty understand that, for some students, the spring may feel as if it’s an eternity away.
“Colleges have reached out to me at the end of the school year noticing a student’s decline in work,” Green said. “Once students send in their applications they feel a sense of a weight unloading on them so they do start to slack after that.”
