Are you feeling Lethargic and overwhelmed? Do you find yourself sleeping in class or skipping school regularly? Do you completely lack any motivation to do schoolwork of any kind? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may be suffering from senioritis. 

Every school year, as spring approaches, Loy Norrix faces the spread of a dangerous epidemic: senioritis. 

Senioritis can be defined as the lack of motivation and decline in performance as seniors reach their final weeks of high school. 

“Senioritis felt like everyday was getting longer and longer,” said senior Ariana Lamper. 

Lamper graduated early and is no longer attending Norrix because her senioritis was so bad. 

One of the most prominent symptoms of senioritis is skipping class. 

“I started feeling like I had senioritis when I started skipping class in the middle of the school year,” said Lamper. 

As the year progresses, students affected by this disease have less and less motivation to come to school

Senioritis can be caused by several different things, or there may be no real reason for it at all. Some of the biggest reasons seniors have for not wanting to come to school is just the general buffoonery that takes place in the hall of Loy Norrix. 

“Hallway traffic…stupid things done by underclassmen or like fights or locked bathrooms: just all that tied together makes me just not want to come to school,” said senior Javon Harris. Harris said that his senioritis started when his grades slipped at the end of his junior year.

Seniors tend to come up with their own unique reasons for not wanting to come to school. Some students say their grades are so good that they don’t need to come to school. Other students think that their grades are so bad that coming to school won’t save them, so why not just stay home? Whatever the reason is, victims of senioritis will do whatever it takes to avoid school. 

While victims of senioritis “hate” coming to school, there are a few select things that really do motivate them to attend their classes. 

Harris shared that when he was feeling unmotivated to come to school, he would just choose to look forward to seeing his friends or different after school activities.

Students just want something small that they can look forward to and enjoy during their day. 

Not only are students affected by this epidemic, but teachers are starting to be impacted as well. Teachers are noticing an increasing lack of motivation and a decline of attendance in their senior classes. 

“I notice in my students that there is a lot of skipping, and I notice that there is a lack of class involvement,” said social studies teacher Niambi McMillon. 

Even though these teachers are not trained doctors, there are a few things they may try to do in order to help their students as best they can. 

“I try to explain to them that in the fall they’re going to be freshman again in college, and they should not let this experience linger to when they get into college,” said McMillion. “A lot of freshmen flunk out their senior year because they don’t have the mental stability to stay strong.”

Even though this disease is as old as time, scientists and doctors still have trouble trying to figure out where exactly it stems from and what the issue really is. Luckily, teachers are able to come to the rescue with a hypothesis of their own. 

“I really think that the senioritis issue is a community responsibility, meaning the teachers, the counselors and their parents,” said McMillon. 

This community in specific should try and work with the seniors a little bit extra, to give them the support they need to be successful. Whether that is extra senior meetings with their counselor, or extra one-on-one time with their teachers. Seniors can pretty much use all the help they can get, as their final years of high school come to a close. 

And for those  suffering from senioritis, during these regular breakouts, you should not drive or attempt to operate machinery. You may also want to avoid taking on any serious or important tasks, as you will not be able to finish them.  

[sno-poll id=”29660″ result_color=”#000E3E” tile_color=”#ffffff” align=”left” background=”on” background_color=”#ffffff” border=”all” border_color=”#888888″ border_size=”5px” shadow=”on”]