Symptoms of Senioritis

To say that senior year is a bit stressful is quite an understatement. With five classes (three of which are AP), a job that keeps me busy for 20-30 hours a week, and the impending doom of college decision-making before graduation, senior year has been a blur. As soon as autumn approaches, it becomes clear to the senior class that not only do we have to pass our last year of school, but that by the end of it, we are also supposed to have a vast majority of our future all figured out: where we wanna go, who we want to be and what exactly life is without high school.

Look at me — thanks to three shots of espresso in the morning, another two after school, and a Monster™ before work, I manage to stay up until one in the morning and still not get one piece of homework done. It feels as though every day we inch farther and farther away from stability as we try to clasp onto adulthood. The cycle of procrastinating on homework, going to work and trying to muster up the motivation to at least peep at college portals is so repetitive, it has made the year slip from our grasps. 

  Not to mention, since the year has started, many seniors’ personal expectations have hit an all-time low. As long as we manage to make it to school half the time without panicking and to maintain grades above a C, we feel like we can pat ourselves on the back. In my own experience, I have always maintained straight As, minus the exceptional AP U.S. History and Honors Precalculus classes. 

Not to mention, every other day is a senior skip day, and what was once frustration during freshman year over a test, is now something we shrug off. Winging it is our new motto. Sometimes these senior skip days are truly just relaxation and rest days from the constant pressure we seem to be under. 

However, I think the vast majority of this senioritis comes from not only mental exhaustion and burnout from all the decisions we are having to make but also from the need to thrive during our last year at Lakota West. For over ten years, we’ve been working hard, trying to get good grades and going to school every single day with the same people. But a couple of months from now, that all is going to change. For most of us, we’ve already made it to the finish line, and as graduation approaches, we want to spend our time making memories instead of laboring over homework. We want to have five shots of espresso a day only to end up staying up until three in the morning to make garlic mac and cheese and watch Netflix. These next few months are the last few months we get until we’re off on our own. Maybe senioritis is solely us trying to make the best out of what we have left.