Friday, March 30, 2018

Senioritis

**Cue the Sarah McLachlan song** Every hour, a student in American schools falls ill with a terrible disease. This illness means these poor innocent children are unable to go to school or perform in their classes. Will you be an angel to support these helpless students? Will you join in the fight against Senioritis?

I might be making light of those “You can make a difference for just 63 cents a day” commercials here, but senioritis is a very real thing. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s something that I think the majority of high school seniors experience. It’s essentially a lull in motivation that comes on in the final year of high school.
I can understand senioritis. It’s really not any different than what a parent who has worked at the same job for 13 years might experience. That’s a long time, and there just might be days where it’s hard to wake up and trudge through the same boring routine. For seniors, the light at the end of the tunnel is right there but they can’t quite get to it yet. It can be hard to keep pushing themselves over that finish line.

For most seniors, a little senioritis is fairly innocuous. Maybe they skip school for the first time, or make their first C. That’s never going to make a parent happy, but in reality, it’s probably something a good student can get away with. However, some seniors come down with a really bad case, and for these students the consequences of senioritis can be enormous. These are the students who miss school two or three days a week, who blow off large assignments or projects entirely, and generally just don’t execute anything. These students are truly at risk of not graduating.

So, I think what’s important here is for parents to be wary of senioritis. I think they need to understand that it is a very real affliction that needs to be monitored. The trick is knowing when to seek treatment. I don’t want to come off as careless, but senior year can be one of most fun years in a person life. So, not every symptom should be cause for alarm. Forgetting to study for an exam that is scheduled for the Friday before prom probably isn’t going to change the course of your child’s future. However, blowing off assignment the Thursday and Friday before, the Monday after and every other Friday and Monday in the school year is problematic.

If you see the most serious signs of senioritis, you need to engage with school officials. Enlist the help of your child’s teachers and staff to keep your child motivated. There is no magic pill for this, but again being aware of it at school and at home can go a long ways towards managing the malady.

On the other hand, if things don’t seem dire, let your senior have a little fun. If they have a good head on their shoulders, they’ll pick back up their good habits next year when they head off to college and things are not so rote for them. Just like you would if you started a new job after 13 years of the same one. And while I’m at it, if you have little kids and haven’t started saving for college yet, just think what you can do with 63 cents a day.