When senior year starts, the main focus is primarily ‘making memories’. By the end of the first semester, after college applications are done, many senior begin suffering from senioritis.

Senioritis is a term often used to describe seniors’ laziness and lack of motivation for school. 

For some seniors, this usually hits at the beginning of senior year, but for many, it happens in the second semester, right after college applications are done.

It hit me during the fourth quarter of this year, and it was largely due to the workload I carried from most of my classes. Trying to balance all this became tough, which made it easier to fall behind because of the ideology that I created, saying, “It’s still early, I can catch up if I need to,” which became my typical excuse. This mindset led me to procrastinate and stress, knowing I could have done better and stayed on top. 

My main goal shifted to just wanting to finish high school, move forward with life, and prepare for college. Once I realized that the end of high school was near, I struggled to find the motivation to complete my work.

Experiencing senioritis showed me that it goes beyond affecting my academic performance, but also my outside life as well. This led to me becoming unmotivated, which was demonstrated in my mood and my work ethic in my homework assignments. I stopped putting in my best efforts, and the pressure from AP classes led me to be overwhelmed, as well as to stick with the bare minimum of my potential. 

My grades did slip a little due to my AP classes. I started turning in my assignments late, something I used to not do. I stopped caring, and started making excuses. 

The creating of excuses was a wake-up call, which pushed me into my old self, and I realized that I needed to end strong.  

I got back on track by using my calendar again. I started writing down all my assignments and daily tasks to do that day and I started asking for help..

Many students don’t make the adjustments to overcome senioritis and lose the chance to graduate with their class due to its effects, resulting in the need to attend summer school to catch up and receive their diploma during the summer.

My advice to incoming seniors would be to tell them not to wait too long to make changes because at some point it will be too late to fix things. Remind yourself of your goals and purpose, tell yourself about how all the hard work will eventually pay off one day. I won’t say it will be easy because it won’t, but you can do it by taking it one step at a time.