Senioritis Strikes SHS Student Population

Senioritis: noun. A crippling disease that strikes high school seniors. Symptoms include laziness, an over-excessive wearing of track pants, old athletic shirts, athletic shorts, and sweatshirts. Also features a lack of studying, repeated absences, and a generally dismissive attitude. The only known cure is a phenomenon known as graduation.

This disease has struck the Class of 2019.

It is not uncommon to hear seniors talking about their plans for the next year–or their lack of motivation to study for their upcoming test.  Whether one likes to admit it or not, most seniors have partially checked out and begun to focus on what’s next.

Senior Katherine English says she is not entirely suffering from senioritis; however, her motivation started to decrease after getting into her top-choice college, Providence College. English said she “doesn’t feel as much pressure” to do extremely well now that the strenuous college process is over. English takes three AP courses and two honors courses but finds she completes her homework in about an hour each night–a drastic change from her junior year.

Many seniors decided to challenge themselves during their junior year so they could ease their way through senior year. Senior Olivia Carle noticed a change in her efforts after the end of the first quarter in November. Carle believes senioritis will only get worse as the year goes on and the weather gets nicer.  Senior Caroline Young doesn’t see much of a difference in her workload from last year, but she has less motivation to get her work done. Although concentration will quickly decrease, these seniors cannot wait for the fun of their senior year to continue.

Although many seniors have experienced a lack of drive in school with graduation sneaking up, excitement about the future has become more apparent. Biology teacher Charlotte O’Driscoll started her first year at Scituate High School when her homeroom, the graduating class of 2019, started their freshman year. O’Driscoll has noticed that her homeroom students seem to be happier and less stressed out during H block than they have been in the past.  A stand out factor has been that “students seem more excited about the future rather than stressed out about the future,” she said.

If you walk into science teacher Steve Maguire’s Oceanography, Ornithology, and Forensic classes, you can see a senior “wake-ups” countdown written on the board.  Each day the number gets alarmingly smaller and smaller. Seniors typically make up 94% of the students enrolled in Maguire’s classes. A common phenomenon among Scituate students is that “you cannot graduate without taking a Maguire class.”  Maguire said he can sense the excitement in his students, and that although senioritis has struck, his students are still “finishing strong.”

The class of 2019 is approaching a milestone in their lives.  Whether they are scared, excited, ready, or nervous, graduation ceremonies will be held on Friday, May 31st.  The stressful (brutal) college process is over, so why not get excited about what’s to come?