By Ryan Stephens
The season brings every sort of sickness imaginable, some easily curable, others not so easily. Spreading like the plague, illnesses like the flu can incapacitate for weeks. The one that is commonly misdiagnosed goes by the name of Senioritis. Senioritis refers to the level of procrastination that occurs to seniors during this time of year because most have applied for colleges or been accepted. However, unlike the name implies, the disease reaches farther than seniors.
“To be honest, I think Senioritis is a myth,” Government teacher Mark Harris stated. “I think all of our students begin to slack at certain times of the school and it has little to do with being a senior.”
Second semester brings many changes, changes in the form of curriculum, attitude, rules, and the effects of these are felt all over the school. Students from all grades posses no immunity to the slacker life that comes from the transition. Even teachers seem to have a weakness to the issue. But why does it happen?
“As summer approaches, all students, not just seniors, become anxious to move on to the next thing,” Harris continues. “In some ways ‘Senioritis’ is structured into the modern curriculum of standardized testing.”
Tests wrapping up in the second semester clue many students into also wrapping it up. As the winding down of the school year continues, the students also now begin to realize the immense changes that loom overhead. For some, it could be a second year of high school, for others, a far grander prospect such as college or full-time entrance into the world of the workforce. Both of those pose a plethora of opportunities that weigh heavily upon seniors and cause them to just wait it out until they can finally get into the next major part of their life.
“I have been procrastinating because I already got accepted to college,” senior Jacob Booker said. “Senioritis is in full swing.”
Ultimately, with testing coming to a close and many of the seniors being accepted into colleges, they have little desire to continue onward with their grade school academic career. The only thing left for them to do is just pass their classes. After all, their averages by the end of this semester have little meaning because they do not contribute towards rankings.
The wave of procrastination hits all of the people at Madison, the underclassmen, the upperclassmen, and even the faculty. However, seniors still take the brunt of the laziness that comes from second semester. Senioritis seems more like legend than fact but the symptoms are very much real and effects almost every student, from your upper strata student to your lower performing one. With the smooth sailing they experience in class, Senioritis does not just develop because of college, it develops because high school almost encourages the attitude. Even with high school in their rear view mirror, seniors can no longer claim they are suffering from a bad case of Senioritis. Instead, they must face the facts, which is that we all blow off school near the end.