On Monday, April 25, senior Cece Lopez showed up to Concert Choir wearing her “sloth Snuggie,” which features both animalian and comfort aspects. The outfit was an unlikely choice for a school day but not so inappropriate for a second semester senior.

Lopez ascribes her garment to a phenomenon called “senioritis.” “Senioritis is very real and traumatizing,” she says.

Lopez’s claim is supported by its official entry in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary. It is defined as “an ebbing of motivation and effort by school seniors as evidenced by tardiness, absences, and lower grades.”

Senior Sammi Coleman has also experienced senioritis and associates it with procrastination and a lack of motivation to do the more tedious assignments of high school. Since feeling senioritis, Coleman has allowed herself to wait to do assignments until the last minute which she always avoided earlier in high school and found “unnerving.”

“There’s a lot of just apathy,” Coleman said. “People don’t care as much anymore.”

Outside of Parker, the world is split on the seriousness of senioritis. Urban Dictionary defines senioritis as “a disease affecting mostly high school seniors.” It adds that the only cure to senioritis is to “graduate or drop out.”

To contrast this humorous depiction, in a Counseling@NYU blog post, Shaunak Patel tells how many teachers and counselors see dangers with senioritis. They believe that the phenomenon can be costly if it becomes too serious, possibly leading to unsuccessful freshman years of college and even rescinded college offers.

Though most colleges require a minimum Grade Point Average to keep your offer of admission, it’s typically not at the level of what it takes to be accepted. 

Senior Daisy Glazier first began to feel senioritis when she got into the college of her choice in December 2021. She still kept up with work but she felt her motivation waning. Glazier had also predicted that once regular college decisions came out, seniors would exhibit more senioritis.

Senior Othel Owen said that just by being accepted into one school and knowing without any doubt that he had somewhere to go next year, he felt more senioritis. “It’s a pretty stressful process,” he said. “You don’t really want to do work after you’ve done so much.”

Owen thinks the senioritis starts to ramp up after April break when seniors have just enjoyed a week of freedom and are then tasked with staying focused for only about four more weeks of high school. “It’s like, what am I doing here?” he said.

Other triggers of senioritis include substitute teachers and March Madness. Either of these situations give seniors more reasons to find things to do other than class.

May Term begins on May 16 and will cause students to be out of school for their last two weeks of high school working on projects and other activities. “I think that taking that May period away from seniors will definitely help because I feel like they would feel a lot of senioritis during May,” Glazier said.

Glazier predicted that May Term would come so soon that seniors would not be anticipating it and would still be relatively focused on school before they leave campus, thus combating senioritis effectively.

Coleman believes that May Term has the potential to intensify senioritis. She attributes this to the fact that seniors will not be taking second semester finals. This allows students to let go of content that they would have needed to retain for the final.

“It’s hard to focus with so much going on and the end so near,” Upper School English teacher Cory Zeller said. She agrees that May Term is increasing the amount of senioritis along with other events that take students out of class including senior ditch day, AP exams, concerts, and field trips.

Upper School math teacher Steve Tyler has taught seniors for all 27 years of his teaching career. He characterizes senioritis as the excitement and other emotions that are felt as high school comes to an end and the next chapter of life begins to take shape. However, Tyler said that for many seniors, there are still accomplishments that deserve devotion even in the last months of high school, like AP exams.

Tyler has told his students that they “worked hard, September, October, November, December, why let the last X amount of weeks destroy all that hard work that you’ve done prior?” He hopes his students remain engaged and end high school on a note they can be proud of.

Zeller has taught seniors for 10 years at Parker and three years at the Latin School of Chicago.“By senior spring, seniors are willing to exert energy on projects or activities that they are passionate about,” Zeller said. “What they seem to run out of steam for are mundane or tedious assignments that they have done for seven other semesters.”

Zeller sees senioritis as a very reasonable response to the burnout that comes from junior year stress and applying to colleges. Additionally, as they approach the end of their high school careers, they want to enjoy each other before it is too late.

The Comedy and Literature elective English course is taught by Zeller each spring to a group of primarily seniors. In order to get her students to stay engaged, she gives most assignments a presentation aspect which adds some pressure.

Tyler mentioned another strategy for continuing the engagement of his seniors which is to ramp up his enthusiasm and engagement as the year goes on in hopes that students will match his dedication.

With the possible exception of some readings, Zeller says that her senior students have completed all of the work for her class, and she has been satisfied with their dedication. “I think senioritis gets this bad rap that they’re lazy,” she said. “I actually don’t think they’re lazy. I think they just focus their energies in other places.”

COVID-19 has further complicated and in many cases, intensified senioritis at Parker. According to Zeller, online school was a lot less work and now that classes are back in person, students have less capacity for the workload.

Glazier thinks that the coronavirus has made her feel less senioritis than she would have without it because of her new value on in-person school. “Now I’m trying to appreciate the time that I have with everyone,” she said, “because I had so much lost time.”