The famous case of senioritis, a supposed affliction of students in their final year of high school or college, characterized by a decline in motivation or performance, has taken a toll on all Heritage seniors at some point this year, but are students overcoming this “disease” as the year comes to an end?

With the increasing number of students continuing to commit to colleges and the strive to push to the end of the year, things are starting to look up for Heritage seniors.

All teachers and staff are aware of the effects of senioritis, including not turning in homework, no motivation to study, a drop in grades, or even just not showing up to school at all. The list goes on and on.  For many teachers it becomes a struggle to keep their students engaged during class.

“Knowing it is a real thing, I try to avoid giving extensive homework and also give incentives for students who come to class and participate,” explained senior English teacher Mrs. DeLaCruz.

It seems as though students like to take advantage of the idea of this being the last year before having to become an adult, in the real world.  In addition, they may have already been accepted/committed to a college, so naturally they think grades don’t matter, when in actuality they do.
“I didn’t think much of it, but I started to notice my lack of care when it came to doing homework and going to class each day, and once I was in that mindset it seemed like I wasn’t going to be able to change it,” said Maceo Coleman (12).

Although for some, senioritis has hit them pretty hard, for other students it seems to have no effect on them or their future.  A decent amount of students from the 2017 class have been accepted and/or are going to an Ivy league school or other similar highly exceptional schools.

Some students include: Alec Bernal(12) who has gotten into Yale, Arjun Sarkar(12) who has gotten into both University of Berkeley and New York University, Christian Sanchez(12) who is going to Harvard, Rigel Sison who is going to UC Berkeley etc.

“This school year I have refused to let anything stop me from meeting my goals of attending USF. I did not work that hard for the past four years to ruin it all in one year and I am pleased say my hard work paid off because I accomplished my goal” explained Logan Ulrich(12).

Even though there have been times where these students have felt overwhelmed, they refused to let senioritis get the best of them.

Senior year can be full of lessons that we learn from to prepare our teenage minds for the adult world and senioritis is just one to the start of many more to come.