Let’s just begin by being completely frank: senioritis is definitely real. If you ask any senior at Guilford, I’d say about 90 percent of them will admit that they have fallen victim to this unfortunate illness. If you ask an underclassman, he or she may say that seniors are being overdramatic, which is what I used to think.

It doesn’t take much to start noticing senioritis around you, as students start to look mopey and even openly discuss how unmotivated they feel. Symptoms include drowsiness, a decrease in academic performance, experiencing episodes of spacing-out, sleeping at inappropriate times, and feeling a lack of motivation.

Can you blame them? With less than a month left until graduation, seniors are already thinking about the summer, their college, dorm room shopping, and meeting-up with their future roommates. They are not thinking about the big presentation that he or she may have to do, or the essay coming up in their fourth hour.

“I realized that senioritis was real when I left school one day and wasn’t sure if all my homework was done,” said Abbie Haak, senior, “nor did I care enough to make sure.”

As for me, someone who has always been moderately motivated and driven, senioritis has hit me hard. School assignments start to make less sense to me, I sleep way more than usual, and I’ve been dragging my feet to get things done. Most of what has actually been on my mind was college, graduation, and summer vacation, not last-minute assignments, projects, or lessons. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been able to keep up with my work and get stuff done; it’s just that it is a lot harder now. However, it seems like a lot of my peers have a much worse case of senioritis than me.

Perhaps another contributor to the senioritis epidemic is how teachers tend to give the senioritis-is-not-an-excuse/you-need-to-finish-strong lecture, which tends to take up a good portion of the class hour. These lectures are understandable, but the reality is, students have already heard this talk many times before.

“Senioritis is the real deal,” said Riley Stonitsch, senior. “We can’t wait to be done with school, to go out to the real world and experience life. Most people feel that and I don’t blame them. High school is tough, man.”