Senioritis, also known as when seniors stop trying.
You would be hard pressed to find someone unfamiliar with the term, because most high schoolers, at one point or another, have seen a senior affected by it. Generally, it’s accepted as a common truth. Some are more affected than others, but a person with senioritis is going to put in less effort until they graduate. The question remains, however, is it a conscious choice that people make or just something that automatically happens?
“I think it’s a bit of both,” junior Thomas Throckmorton said. “You’ve been doing this for so long, so the process gets boring. You just want to be done with it.”
“I don’t think they’re like, “Oh I’m not gonna try for a class,”” senior Andrew Gunara said. “It just kind of happens.”
As students get older and understand the school system better, they may treat it as a more transactional process. For many, the main motivation to get good grades in the first place is to get into a good college, most evidently in their junior year.
“I need to lock in to make sure I get into the schools I want,” Throckmorton said.
Of course, college applications aren’t the only factors that motivate students.
“[What drives me is] my parents and my ego,” Gunara said. “When I see my grades go down, I don’t feel very good.”
But because of when application windows are, with most GPAs being submitted the first senior semester or earlier, senior grades aren’t always seen as quite as important.
“[People are affected by senioritis] because they realize, or people say that their grades don’t matter, and then they just stop trying,” Gunara said. “[Once my college apps are done], I shall probably not care at all.”
The difference between juniors and seniors can sometimes be seen in classes that the two grades share, such as AP Environmental Science.
“There’s a couple of [students] that miss more than what I would say is prudent for a senior,” AP Environmental Science teacher Danielle Barcenas said. “And I feel like that’s the case of senioritis. I’d say the juniors are definitely more locked in, and they attend school more often. [They] all have A’s.”
The drastic changes that can overtake students as soon as they enter their senior year serve as an excellent example of how fickle motivation can be. In extreme cases, students who were doing just fine can sometimes struggle to graduate towards the end of the second semester. Attendance particularly is one of the biggest factors, with some seniors accumulating huge amounts of hours and struggling to make them up in the final weeks of the year. Personally, I never thought I would be one to be affected too badly by senioritis. Yet already I feel its pull. I attribute it to thinking about college so often– when I consider my life beyond high school, the rest of the school year can sometimes feel like an afterthought.
As we’ve grown older and school has asked more of us, there’s been less motivation to go above and beyond. The atmosphere in classes that are a graduation requirement, particularly on-level courses, is much less energized than it was back in elementary and middle school, and even underclassman courses. Over time, as students become more independent, they may feel less loyal to the institutions that educate them, enduring school rather than embracing it. By the time students are seniors, they may feel ready to move on to bigger and better things.
