Senioritis: a contagious illness of seniors in their final year of high school or college, often shown by a decline in motivation or performance. Senioritis is a common term mainly used in school to describe the decreased motivation toward school work displayed by students who are coming to the end of their high school, college, and graduate school careers. Many examples of when seniors have senioritis is when they don’t show up to school frequently, when they leave school in the middle of the day, when they stop caring about grades as much as they did before and they start getting lazy. It’s when they find that doing anything besides homework or school work is a bigger priority.

When asked what senioritis is, senior Fallon Queeney states,“once you get into college, no one cares. If I’m doing well in a class, I’ll kind of, you know, slack off. The only motivation is to not take finals if you get an A in a class.” Freshman, Audrey McMorrow talks about her sister, Nora, who is a senior, “she doesn’t do any homework at home, and she and her friends go out on school nights. Nora doesn’t come to school that much, and she doesn’t care about being late or getting dismissed.” When asked if this has always been like her sister, she responds, “it progressively got worse(within the years of high school).”

“Well we often times have kids who are just distracted, usually you think of it as someone who doesn’t really want to sit still, pretty much has always been a fabulous student, and then you’re kind of watching them unwind in their attentiveness and their persistence is waning,” high school art teacher, Ms. Pepe stated. “And they seem to want to finish sooner, maybe without the same amount of attention to their craftsmanship and it’s really just sometimes frustrating to watch, but on the other hand it’s understandable.” Some students may even ignore rules due to senioritis. “On occasion it does get out of hand, and I might have to kick them out of the room for a minute, I’ll say ‘will you take that out in the hall’ and ‘time to regroup.’ It’s usually not a discipline problem; it’s more of a silly, kind of excited behavior, or the opposite, not getting enough sleep, not caring if they get enough sleep.”

When having senioritis, the mind just wanders. “The other day the teacher told me to do the homework page; I was just like… ‘no..’,” confesses Sam Manning. “Teachers expect (senioritis)…they’re forced to tolerate it.” states senior, Fallon Queeney.

Senioritis shows teachers many things, either good or bad. “Their grades are all in for college and they’re kind of coasting. Again, they have things they are thinking about and I appreciate that, so I try to have those conversations, like ‘what does your future look like?’ ‘did you get your dorm assignment yet?’ those kind of conversations just to push them through those days when they are just really distracted,” Ms. Pepe said.