As the days of the school year slowly tick away, high school seniors around the nation are beginning to feel the toll of four years of monotony. With junior year stresses such as testing and grades in the past, these seniors are now experiencing a phenomenon known widely as “Senioritis”. Merriam-Webster dictionary defines this strange behavior as “an ebbing of motivation and effort by school seniors as evidenced by tardiness, absences, and lower grades”. Students affected by Senioritis will often find themselves with compulsive urges to watch the clock, sleep throughout class, and give up entirely. As of now, there is no known cure for Senioritis available to the public other than to simply play the waiting game.
Although most seniors experience Senioritis somewhere around the second semester, 2013 is proving to be a year of exceptional laziness. In just the first week of school, many MHS seniors are finding themselves with clear-cut symptoms of the affliction. MHS senior Stevie LaFeriere has been struggling with Senioritis for more than the standard couple of months. Stevie has been attending MHS for the last four years and has stated that his case of Senioritis began somewhere in the middle of his sophomore year. Having taken almost all of the AP courses that MHS has to offer, Stevie is left taking only a couple of classes a day as part of his work-study program. Stevie feels as though this work-study program allows his to “take a break from high school and take my mind off of finishing my senior year”. When asked if he would try as hard in the fist semester of his senior year as he did during the entirety of his junior year, he simply replied, “honestly, no”. Several other MHS seniors such as Dan Iskandar and Greg Travers have also admitted to experiencing early bouts of Senioritis. They described their ordeal as a day-to-day struggle to stay awake through mundane classes such as AP Calculus and AP Literature.
While Stevie and many others are fighting the daily obstacles that come along with Senioritis, some are seeking to make the most out of their senior year. One of Madison Dodger Online’s own writers Jim Nagle expressed that “even though most of the hard work is behind me, I still need to give an effort and finish my high school career strong”. This mentality held by Mr. Nagle is a rare occurrence retained by only a handful of current MHS seniors as they prepare to move on to a new stage in their lives. Hopefully a cure for Senioritis will soon arise, but for now, the Class of 2014 must join together and brace themselves for another ten months of boredom and hopelessness.