Dealing with Senioritis

Senioritis is a condition many people my age find themselves with. It always seems to seep its way into our lives once we cross into the second semester of our last year of high school. It starts out simple, you miss a class to get out of a test, skip a Monday every now and then so you can sleep in, turn in an assignment late because it’s not like it really matters. Next thing you know, your attendance is worse than it’s ever been because you’re skipping first hour everyday and your grades are starting to slip from the assignments that “didn’t really matter”, then it starts to manifest itself into burnout, where you wonder why you’re even going to school in the first place. 

Everything seems so repetitive once you’ve been doing it for four years. It’s always the same classrooms, same halls, same teachers and the same curriculum at the end of the day. I feel like now that I’ve hit the second semester of my senior year, holding up my grades and GPA for so long now, I just feel exhausted. 

Along with the repetitiveness of everyday life as a senior in high school, there’s also the taunting excitement of the future of graduating. I was accepted into the University of Missouri-Kansas City back in September of 2022, only a month after my senior year started. Ever since then, I’ve been eager to start my first college semester, but it was still a whole year away. I signed up for orientation, visited campus a few times with some UMKC graduates and signed up for event notices so I could track all of UMKC events for incoming freshmen. Going to high school for my first semester as a senior knowing that I was so close to graduating and going to my dream school was a torture, and definitely made me question why I was even still in high school. 

A huge part of college that makes it a much better improvement to highschool is having the freedom to pick my own classes. Besides for your gen-eds, I can choose to only learn about things that pertain to my degree and personal interests. Which I believe is what learning should be all about. Students don’t want to take classes that don’t interest them, which is a huge downside to high school. 

Another contributing factor to my senioritis was having friends that had already graduated from high school. Seeing them sleep in on the weekdays, working days so they have nights off, it makes me envious of their lives. Hanging out with them was always difficult too because I had school all day, and I could never stay out late with them because I would have to be in class early the next day. It made me feel left out, like I couldn’t truly fit in with the crowd until I graduated, which only made me want to skip class more. 

All these factors seem to contribute to my senioritis, yet they also make me more excited for my last year of high school. With such little time left before we graduate and start college, I find myself wanting to savor what I have left of the school year. For the first time in my life I’ve been wanting to go to school events more often, get involved in clubs and take as many classes as possible. Even with all the reminders of why graduation can’t come sooner, I’m still reminded of what I’m gonna miss when I leave. 

Which is why even with the desire to skip everyday, the lack of motivation and the burnout, I still want to do my best for my last semester and go out with a bang for my last year.