From the outside, school seems to be winding down for our Ida B. Wells seniors, but it seems like an eternity before we can walk the stage. Senioritis is a devastating condition and unfortunately, it is running rampant through the seniors at Ida B. Wells.

Senioritis is a condition that seniors in high school get throughout the year. Symptoms include skipping class, late assignments, or even not turning in assignments at all. It is very contagious. If you don’t have senioritis, you might get it if you start noticing your friends displaying symptoms. When you have senioritis you’ll start to notice longer days, weeks and months, and the school year will feel like 10 school years.

Effort is the main symptom for the seniors. “I’m just lacking with the amount of effort I put into my homework, if I even do it at all,” said senior Matthew Eyberg. 

Effort is tough when you have senioritis because of the lost motivation. You think to yourself, “I’m almost done with school, do I really have to do this?” 

Senior Devlin Christiansen puts the blame on the in-person school. “I am behind on all of my classes, I know,” Christiansen said. “I used to procrastinate, but it’s definitely amplified because of in-person school being back.”

That’s the main reason people catch senioritis at all. Senioritis was already a problem before COVID-19, but now, people are back in normal school and it is clearly getting to people. 

Online school was shorter and more flexible than normal school, and now we are forced to make this sudden jump to longer school days, longer classes, and larger workloads, without even accounting for after school commitments. The seniors just want to time jump to June, but unfortunately, it couldn’t come any slower. 

Senioritis is a visible condition too. In the classroom, you may notice a loss in the ability to focus. 

“At the end of the day I just cannot focus,” said Eyberg. “My 8th period class is hard to focus [in] because the class just keeps going on and on; but I have to force myself to focus.” 

Senioritis can become evident if you have a tough class like AP Calculus or if you have a lighter class like yoga. “I have yoga eighth period, which isn’t a hard class, but I still get so distracted,” said Christiansen. 

The abundant access that seniors have to personal vehicles only make Senioritis worse. Being able to get in your car and leave is a killer. Bored at the end of the day as a freshman? There’s nothing you can do. Bored at the end of the day as a senior? Just walk out and drive away. 

“We have access to cars, we can leave whenever we want, and that will always be in the back of our minds,” said Eyberg. 

At the end of the day, school is school. You need to pull it together sometimes and focus, and there are strategies for that. “I just like to lock in at home and make a classroom environment at home when I have an important assignment to do,” said Eyberg. “I like to put my phone away and just get it done.” 

That’s a tough strategy though, and some struggle with it. “I try to do that, but after a long period of time, I just can’t do it anymore,” said Christiansen.

Even as senioritis affects hundreds of seniors at IBW, we will get through it and continue day by day, until that final day in June where we all can heave a big sigh and say “finally”.