It’s less than fifteen school days until seniors can graduate and go onto the next leg of their life. At this point, many may be feeling “senioritis” and start to skip school or not do their homework. The last stretch may start to feel like the hardest out of all of them to complete.

    According to the Student Services office, overall absenteeism of seniors has increased from 12.05% during 1st semester to 14.57% during 2nd semester.

    Why are seniors feeling so unmotivated? For many, it could be because they’re so close what they’ve been working on for most of their lives: college. At this point, most have already been accepted to their college, so there’s less motivation for getting good grades. IB senior English teacher Kristi Latimer has taught seniors for all the years that she’s been here and understands where the lack of motivation might come from.

    “It’s really the same every year,” Latimer said. “It’s right around the people start figuring out where they’re going to school next year; their focus shifts, and they start thinking ahead.”

    She tries to keep the class interesting with saving some of the best material for this tiring part of the year. The seniors in her class read “Song of Solomon” and have a creative writing assignment to finish off the year. According to Latimer, “Song of Solomon” is a unique, challenging novel that most students enjoy, and the creative writing is an assignment that tends to be a lot less stressful than the other papers in the class. They also have a common goal to focus on, which makes staying focused easier: passing the IB exam. Latimer tries to ensure that students can get the grades that they desire by continuing to work with them, even as they may start to lack the motivation.

    Her general advice to all students is to respect the efforts that you’ve made so far.

    “You’ve worked really hard to get to this point, so you want to respect your previous efforts enough to finish strong in the last couple months. It can be really hard to do when the sun is out, and the prospect of finishing is over, and you just feel so done with high school,” Latimer said, “but just reminding yourself that it’s only a few more months of your life, you still have some things to learn, you might as well learn something while you’re here, so put a little bit of energy into it and then let it go.”

    This advice can be easier said than done for some students. Senior Corbin Wilson felt senioritis kick in during December.

    “I thought that winter break should’ve come sooner, and so I was like ‘I’m just going to make my own winter break’, but school was still going on. But then I was like ‘I don’t care’,” Wilson said.

    He used to be full-IB, but had to drop it since he did not get his EE (Extended Essay) done by the Jan. 15 deadline, which is a requirement in order to get the IB diploma. Now he feels a lot less stress, still gets good grades on tests, and is looking forward to graduating.

    Hugo Virelas-Vasquez has been involved in many different areas of the school, including theatre, choir and band. He’s experienced some senioritis but is focused on graduating. He thinks that it’s important for students to think before letting themselves slip in their last year.

    “Don’t just brush it off and say ‘I’ll just skip this class or I’ll not do this’,” Vasquez said. “Think about it, and the consequences.”

    Senior Becky Killion is a full-IB student and has struggled somewhat with attendance as the senioritis started to kick in, missing 21 days of school, but has learned to prioritize classes in order to make the best of it. She also made an effort to prepare for the IB exams. Even with the lack of energy, she has decided not to stop.

    Her advice to other students echoes a similar sentiment: “You might feel like you want to leave early, but just think about it kind of like a race. A lot of times when I think about IB, I think about cross country and it’s kind of like the 5K, and I remember when I was running through it sometimes I would wish that I could just trip over something and fall so I didn’t have to keep doing it. But every single time I finished, and I never stopped running. In life, since it’s a long term thing you can obviously take rests in-between, but just look for the end.”

    With the finish line so close in sight, seniors can find some spirit within them to finish strong with what they have started.