Senior year at Grant High School is drawing to a close and things around campus are coming to an end. For one senior boy, no baseball means doing the bare minimum to finish out high school. He no longer has to keep up his grades to play a sport, so procrastination has become a problem.
One student has been absent to his history class eight out of nine times in the last three weeks. His bus has been running late, but he doesn’t mind if he arrives to class on time or not at all. He has a decent grade and gets his work done. That’s all that matters.
For others, just showing up to class can be daunting. A senior girl has been absent to 29 class periods her second semester and her perfect grades have gone downhill. With parents breathing down her neck and scholarship opportunities still in play, her grades need a drastic turnaround. Although all motivation to attend class regularly is gone, skipping class is no longer an option.
Every year, senioritis sweeps through the school like an epidemic. Many teens are feeling the excitement of graduating and beginning the next chapter in their lives. Seniors spend the first semester plotting their futures and deciding which paths they will take. But as their focus seeps away from the future, the “here and now” takes center stage.
Losing that focus can be problematic when there is schooling they have yet to finish. These days with tight budgets and a bad economy, people’s wallets are becoming thinner as the cost for college increases. With expenses going through the roof, senioritis can come at a cost if bad habits remain constant.
“Every year, I have a jump in the number of potential failure letters that I send home in the third quarter,” says counselor Liz Mahlum. “Students who have never failed a class fail classes at the end of the third quarter. Students experience a lot of different emotional responses to the end coming up and a certain amount of stress about finishing.”
Mahlum believes all the emotional stress builds up and some students are exhausted because they believe they have the skills to pull it together at the last second. The truth? They aren’t aware of the level of stress this creates in other areas. Mahlum says at the end of the day it comes down to procrastination. But she believes that laziness is definitely not the only reason why some students stop trying during the end of their senior year.
“I think the bigger piece is that you’re about to have a really big transition and whenever there are big transitions in your life it can be really stressful. And everybody copes with stress differently,” Mahlum says. “Some people stop doing work, some people go into overdrive doing work, some people sleep a lot, some don’t sleep. You layer on all of these different stresses that you guys haven’t had to experience before and you still need to finish high school.”
Ann Sola, a psychologist in downtown Portland, says senioritis may be a common feeling among seniors because they are subconsciously allowing themselves to rest before their transition to college.
“They are demonstrating to parents that they are moving to a more independent role and they don’t need their parents in that way to tell them what to do because they’re going to figure it out themselves,” Sola says. “They’re either preparing themselves for the challenge ahead or they’ve never really liked school work anyway.”
Regardless of whether students begin to slack or not toward the end of their senior year, Sola believes it won’t affect them in college. But she acknowledges that bad habits can develop.
“You’ve already learned your study skills well before your second semester of your senior year, but you’ve still got to do your responsibilities so you can go to the college you want to,” she says.
“There’s nothing wrong with slacking off a bit,” Sola says. “For many, it could be quite beneficial to ease up somewhat and if you have the skills you have them, and you’re not going to lose them.”
Mahlum agrees, saying senioritis is like a bad case of the flu.
Davis Gerald noticed the symptoms of senioritis once he returned to school from Spring Break. It began with him slacking off on his homework and progressed to him purposefully finding other things to do instead of his schoolwork.
“After being away for the week, I didn’t feel like getting back into the groove of school,” Gerald says. “It was partly the nice weather and the fact that my friends are in the same boat as me.”
But as second semester came faster than he expected, Gerald checked his EdBox and noticed his G.P.A was well below a 3.2, where it had been almost all of high school. He was failing two classes.
“I just realized I needed to get my stuff together, but I still haven’t completely done that,” says Gerald, who is heading to Portland State University. “As long as I don’t fail any classes and receive credit, I should be fine.”
For senior Fiona Will, the buzz of the alarm clock sounds at 6:30 a.m. on Friday mornings. The buzzing continues 30 minutes past the designated time before Will drags herself out of bed. If she hears someone else in the bathroom, she uses that as an excuse to go back to sleep. That’s when her mom gets involved and forces Will out of bed in hopes that her daughter is somewhat on time for school.
“I used to always be on time to every class. But this year, I am late more than early,” says Will, who is headed to the University of California-Irvine. “There have been days where I went to bed late the night before without doing my homework and when the alarm goes off in the morning, I think: ‘What is the point? I didn’t do the homework and I’m so freaking tired!’ So I sleep instead.”
Will says lately she has been very behind in school and feels “useless.” If she doesn’t feel like going to class, she won’t go. Like many students, she has plans for after high school and gets good grades, so she doesn’t have the drive to keep giving high school her all.
Will’s mother, Christine Clark, appreciates her daughter’s good grades and determination, but notices a change in her work ethic this year. “She doesn’t really care anymore and I feel like the people around her aren’t very motivating,” Clark says. “It feels like the only thing I am doing now is nagging her about her homework. There’s a part of me that wants to let her go and do what she needs to do.
“But the other part of me feels like she’s not using her time well at all and it’s frustrating for me because I want this last bit of time with her to be good. Our relationship is strong enough that it won’t make a difference at all. It’s just not very pleasant right now.”
Senior Samara Battisti says her lack of motivation and interest in school has created tension in her home as well.
She wants to blame “my parents for not being harder on me about school but in the end I really can’t blame anyone else,” Battisti says.
Battisti has only two classes during her second semester of senior year, the bare minimum to graduate. She wonders sometimes: “Why even go? It’s only for a couple hours anyway.” Ultimately, after having the scare of possibly not being able to graduate, Battisti now realizes how important grades really are and how real they’re becoming as graduation approaches.
Overall, her grades have put a strict limit on her options after high school, and it’s something she hopes to change in the future. She’s not sure what she’ll do next but is looking into community college.
Some critics may say that senioritis is an excuse; others deem it natural. Social studies teacher Don Gavitte sees what students may be jeopardizing in their future. If senioritis comes at a cost, that cost may vary, and for some that may mean wasting away the thousands and thousands of dollars they spent on attending a college.
Having more freedom and carrying on bad habits like tardiness and procrastination may cause many students to feel bombarded and not ready for the next step. They either drop out of college or become unsuccessful in holding a job.
Steve Smith, associate dean for student academic affairs at Pacific University in Forest Grove, has been working with students for 16 years. Throughout his tenure, he has become familiar with the habits of students entering college. He sees a small portion of students entering with some of the bad habits they practiced in high school and notices it becomes a problem.
“College is more difficult than high school in terms of our academic expectations and the material is more difficult. If you come to the university thinking that you’re going to succeed without good habits, you will have a quick and rather painful wake-up call,” Smith says. “In the very first semester, we see students in deep academic difficulty– even two and three weeks into the term – because if you miss one class session you can be woefully behind already.”
Those particular students that fall into this category tend to be the students who don’t have good time management skills, aren’t self-disciplined and don’t handle new freedoms very well. Smith says it likely correlates to how they behaved in their senior year. There are always some students who stumble right away because they’re not prepared for college. This can result in students dropping out. On occasion, colleges ask students to leave and suspend those who aren’t performing well academically after a period of time.
“The university tries to do its best to tell its students that have been admitted what we expect of them. I think students who are interested in going to college have to read up on what their lives will be like when they are college students,” Smith says. “I encourage students to take more challenging courses so they can hit the ground running when they enter college.”
And this is the advice Gavitte gives to his current seniors: “With college-bound students, every senior should be taking one or two classes that are college level because they should be doing something that is giving them insight into what’s next,” Gavitte says.
As the year ends, Gavitte says the seniors in his classes are missing too much school. He believes the lack of attendance is partly due to the fact that people have so many gaps in their schedules and it’s been hard to get into a groove of going to school and attending class regularly.
“I think we have to give seniors more meaningful things to do and more meaningful opportunities. There’s no reason for it to be three wasted months,” Gavitte says. “I think seniors should buck up and be serious until the end, but I think we have to provide some things for them to be serious about.”
About the future of his seniors, he adds: “If you got one foot out the door, we can’t make it easier to have both feet out the door.”
In his classes, Gavitte tries to make sure all of his students are interested in the work they are doing. He does this by assigning big projects with little bits due at a time in hopes that his students don’t procrastinate as much. He doesn’t want his students gazing out the window and looking “into the future” because he sees the future as now. His philosophy? Everything you do now affects your future, for better or worse.
He says just because students are accepted to a college doesn’t mean they will be successful. He sees the lofty college dropout rate and declares that it’s a waste of time and money for all who are involved. “If you are not preparing for college, you should be preparing for something,” Gavitte says.
The way senior Miriam Kohn looks at it, there is no reason not to do her best. She says she has been lucky enough to have access to ample opportunities because people around her have made sacrifices. Kohn considers it inexcusable to do less than her best and throw away the sacrifices she and others have made for her sake.
“To that end, I don’t skip class, make a point of continuing to do my work, and try not to get too caught up in looking ahead to college to enjoy the end of high school,” says Kohn, who will attend the University of Rochester.
Education is highly valued in her household, and this mindset has helped her remain on top of her schooling. But ultimately the extra push and shove comes from within.
“I’d be lying if I said senioritis didn’t affect me because doing just about any scholastic activity requires considerably more motivation than it did previous to senior year,” Kohn says. “However, I don’t think that more difficulty is an excuse not to follow through on things. I made a commitment to do all of my activities – including my classes – through the end of the year and I can’t justify copping out early.”
Unlike Kohn, senior Cordell Harris has had trouble focusing this year. After being accepted to multiple schools, Harris picked Occidental College, where he’ll play football.
“Now that I have sent in all the paperwork and know where I am going and that Grant has the countdown in center hall, it isn’t getting any easier,” Harris says. “Luckily, I am taking two college level classes to keep my focus a little.”
When thinking of his future next year, Harris says that he has to remain on track as a student-athlete.
“I have to prove myself all over again to my teammates, as well as my coaches,” Harris says. “The student part really comes first at my school, so I have to stay on top of all my work and take advantage of the great professors there. It is nice though that unlike high school, I will get to go to school every day because I want to, not because I have to.” ♦
