Symptoms: Not caring about school; having a bad attitude; wanting to hang out with friends and do other fun activities, rather than doing homework and working on scholarships; giving up on classes with the mindset that, “as long as I pass, it will be ok,” or worse, “there’s no way that teacher will fail me!”
Causes: Unknown. Parents and Educators have been trying to figure this out for years. Many theories abound, but no one proven cause has been found.
Cure: Change your mindset to make yourself remember and believe that you need to work hard until the very last final is taken, the very last paper has been turned in, the very last school activity has been completed, the very last scholarship application is in. The power to cure (or to avoid) this affliction lies solely in the student.
As a teacher/school counselor for 34 years and the parent of three sons, I have seen my share of “senioritis.” It can strike quickly or it can come on slowly over a period of time. Some students seem to escape it entirely or are at least able to beat its negative impact on their lives. Some students profess to have contracted it early in their high school years, and it has never gone away. I have seen senioritis cause a number of students to lose a “graduation with honors” distinction because their final cum GPA dipped below the set minimum. I have seen students give up on a sport or other extra-curricular activity because they were in such a hurry to be “done” with school. I have seen students who were not on the principal’s and my “watch list,” as a concern for not passing a required class for graduation, barely squeak a passing grade, or worse, not pass that required class, meaning they did not earn their diploma. I’ve seen students who were very easy-to-like and got along well with teachers and other adults turn into students who were not well-liked and were very difficult to deal with. All of these situations came from a negative change in attitude and in effort, usually in the last months of the students’ senior year of high school.
How can you avoid senioritis? It all has to do with your mindset and attitude. You have to make yourself think positively and realize that you can see the light at the end of the tunnel. You have to force yourself to get out of bed every day and continue to go to your classes, turn in your homework, study for your tests, and complete those last scholarship applications with the same enthusiasm you had for the earlier applications. You have to make yourself continue on in that sport or other activity and give it your all. You have to remember that you will never get these same opportunities ever again, and you do not want to look back and wish you had finished high school on a stronger, more positive note. Only you have control over your attitude and effort. We adults like to think that we can control it for you, but we can’t. Not really. It is up to you to finish strong so that you can look back and know you did everything you could to do your best, right up until the final bell.
One of my responsibilities as a school counselor was to send out post-graduate surveys to students who had been out of high school one year and five years. I was very fortunate to be able to read what they were doing after high school and to see what things in high school helped them, as well as what areas they thought we could have done a better job. Their responses were always interesting and usually very valid. I can say in my 17 years of compiling these surveys, I never ever had a student say they wished they hadn’t worked so hard in high school or that they wished they had not challenged themselves so much. On the contrary, I often had students report that they wished they would have worked harder, challenged themselves more, and/or kept working harder through the very end of their senior year. I think the proof is right there – out of the mouths of those who recently graduated. Avoid senioritis. Keep working hard. Finish strong. You will never regret it.
Mary Joan - ICAN Sioux City, Orange City, and Sheldon Centers
