“Senioritis” is a disease that affects high school seniors. The symptoms of “senioritis” include, laziness, lack of studying, dismissive attitude and not caring. Like all other seniors, I suffer from this devastating disease and will explain how we all got infected by it. If you are not yet a senior I am sorry to tell you that there is no cure other than graduation.

Additionally, becoming infected by this disease is inevitable and you will eventually have it. “Senioritis” however, is not an illness you inherit after becoming a senior, but rather the product of the bad habits we develop throughout our freshman, sophomore and junior years.

A 24 hour day for a the average student is as follows; seven hours of it are spent in school, leaving us with only 17 hours left in our precious day. We need at least three hours everyday to do things we enjoy such as, playing a competitive online game, participating in sports, browsing the internet and interacting with our friends. Work and responsibilities can take up to four hours of our day. The last ten hours of our day consists of sleeping– which should last about 8 hours. We now have two hours remaining, 1 of those consists of the time it takes to fall asleep and wake up. Our final hour is liquidated throughout our day, it could consist of; traveling, tying your shoe, laughing, using the bathroom, ect. We are now left with no time to do homework. Sadly however, our  teachers still assign us with vast quantities of homework and projects that we clearly don’t have time for.

So what do we high schoolers do? We prioritize. Games, friends — and most importantly our lives — are more of a priority than doing our homework. This means that we will wait till the last possible moment to do it. That last moment typically resides in the middle of the night when we keep telling ourselves, “I really should have started this earlier today!” The best thing we all believe to do is sacrifice sleep because by bedtime time we have done everything else in the day we care about. This leads to sleep deprivation, otherwise known as the origin of “senioritis”. This is a pattern that originates our freshman year.

By sophomore year, we are officially integrated into the high school. This is when our brains start to develop. We are now more responsible individuals who look ahead in our class schedules, remember when assignments are due and keep track of when tests are. However, as the end of the year approaches we realize that we have two whole years of school left. A common choice is to take the easy route, of only doing enough to pass while not failing the class. By doing this sophomores are meeting what’s called “minimum requirements” — aka the foundation of “senioritis”. We might be thinking as a sophomore, “I have two whole years to make up these grades, I’ll be fine!”

Sadly we won’t be.

By the time junior year rolls around a lot of us are driving to school. We no longer have to worry about catching the bus which means we can sleep in and go to school as we please! A car is a high schoolers companion that connects us to the world and enhances our social lives. Be as that may it also provides juniors with the opportunity skip more efficiently because with a car they can take themselves home without relying on a bus. With a car we can also take ourselves out to eat and possibly enjoy a “double lunch”.

While having a car is a wonderful privilege, it also provides students the option of skipping. When I was a junior one of my friends once told me “Why should I go to school and struggle to stay awake, when I can sleep in at home and come to school awake?”

Self persuasion is the final step to acquiring “senioritis.”

As seniors we convince ourselves that all these bad habits we have obtained throughout the years are acceptable. Our time management dwindled freshman year, and we now have no care in the sense of prioritizing. Our effort went out the window sophomore year and is seemingly non existent now. Junior year brought the readily available excuse to not participate which we regularly take advantage of now. Now “senioritis” is in full motion surging through all of us. It will be with us till the day we get our diplomas, unless we succumb to disease first.