Editor’s Be aware: This text was written for Mosaic, an unbiased journalism coaching program for highschool college students who report and {photograph} tales underneath the steerage {of professional} journalists.
A standard feeling is now rippling all through the highschool class of 2025. As exams, school acceptance choices and next-steps in-life come collectively abruptly, many highschool seniors are affected by senioritis.
Signs can embrace stress, burnout, exhaustion and an total lack of motivation.
“It just feels like I have finished [high school] and I have nothing else to learn,” mentioned Stephen Alcocer, a senior at Del Mar Excessive Faculty in San Jose. “I’m grown, I have a job, my own car, I do everything by myself.” In consequence, he mentioned, faculty is “not feeling important anymore.”
He mentioned he now may skip courses when he is aware of he can do his schoolwork on-line. However he nonetheless makes certain he’s current for checks and maintains passing grades.
Adam Orenstein, a senior at Branham Excessive Faculty in San Jose, additionally confessed to a case of senioritis, however added it’s not essentially dangerous.
“I’m the type of person to always get my work done on time, to never procrastinate and still turn in all my work,” Orenstein mentioned. However currently, he added, “I’m just feeling less motivation to be on top of every single assignment and every single studying session I have to do.”
As a substitute, he mentioned he’s “prioritizing the more fun events that I want to do, like hang out with my friends, or stay at [tennis] practice extra long instead of going home and working on my homework, which I probably would have done in the first semester.”
He added that whereas he’s “procrastinating a bit more and prioritizing my social life more than my academics, I’m still maintaining my academic success and everything. So I think it’s a good thing in my case.”
For some college students, although, senioritis is extra of an affliction.
“Everything is stacking up slowly. I guess it just makes me want to take a break,” Del Mar senior Ramma Hamdela mentioned.
Hamdela, who carries a heavy educational load, mentioned she is feeling particularly burnt out this month as a result of she has been fasting throughout Ramadan. “So after fasting for close to 13-14 hours, when I finally eat, it just knocks me out at like 7 p.m.”
Her grades have taken successful, she mentioned, “like from going from an A to a B.”
However total, she mentioned, she continues to plow ahead. She mentioned she feels obligated as a result of she’s a first-generation, college-bound scholar. “My only family here is my mom, dad, my sister. … everyone else is back home [in Ethiopia]. So I’m like a bridge from here to there.”
“I literally have no option to stop or take a brain break… I just got to, like, full steam ahead, just keep on going,” she mentioned.
Danielle Schwartz, who teaches superior historical past at Del Mar, mentioned that she’s seen some seniors even have been “buckled in and gotten more focused.” However most, she added, “have lost some of their drive and their focus.”
That presents a problem when main a category, Schwartz mentioned. “It takes extra time and extra effort to first take note of those students, grab their attention and bring them back in … and then to keep their attention afterwards.”
She did specific sympathy for the seniors’ scenario, and added it’s pure for a instructor to assume, “Oh, I don’t want to add more to their plate.”
One scholar with so much on his plate is Jose Soreque, a senior at Silver Creek Excessive Faculty in San Jose and a part-time commerce faculty movie scholar. He mentioned senioritis impacts him emotionally, “because sometimes I doubt that I’m being a good person, or I doubt that I’m trying my best. Sometimes if I have a really bad day… because I’m doing a lot of stuff, I think, am I not good enough?
“I realized that I have to be a lot of things to a lot of people,” he mentioned. “I have to be a son, a brother, a boyfriend, a friend, a worker, an artist, a student. So I’ve just been trying to deal with all of that, on top of still trying to stay positive about it.”
Soreque affords perception to these bothered with senioritis. “Just because someone isn’t trying their best moment or in a specific time, that doesn’t mean they’re not trying in something else,” he mentioned. “Everyone tries something every day, and just because it isn’t something you see, it doesn’t mean it’s not happening.”
Sophia Urias is a senior at Del Mar Excessive Faculty in San Jose.
