“An ebbing of motivation and effort by school seniors as evidenced by tardiness, absences, and lower grades”,  http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/senioritis stated.

This is how the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the senioritis some you may be feeling right now, but ask any psychologist and they’ll just say you’re depressed.

Commonly senioritis is known to be the effect of believing that grades don’t matter as much anymore, and that you’re a senior who’s already applied to college so you don’t need to perform to the same standard you would have if your school life served a purpose, and so you shed your obligations with a sort of carefree airiness and relief. However I’ve found that for most people, having senioritis is not such a floating sensation.

It’s heavy. The pressure of getting accepted into colleges, the weighted realization that now you actually have to do something with your life, the consciousness that most of what you’ve been doing for the past twelve years has all led up to this, and the questioning that comes with it of whether or not you actually did any of it for yourself, or if it was just for the grades and the societal acceptance of attending a university. Of course, when grades don’t matter as much anymore, what’s the point? This is what I’m getting at.

With the higher-stakes of junior year over and the new homework policy implemented, there’s little motivation to get much done unless you are genuinely interested in an area of study or simply can’t shake your work ethic.

However, even with things I know I’m interested in I still find a struggle in trying to carry them out, and I’ve found that I am not an anomaly in this. This phenomenon is not uncommon as a symptom of depression, which leads me to question if senioritis is just a more situational form of this disease.

As the first quarter draws to a close with early applications sent in, I’ve begun to re-analyze my priorities and what it is that I actually enjoy doing and learning. I’ve found that much of what I done has been almost entirely motivated by grades and building my resume rather than what I believed to be interested in, which has left me in a sort of existential crisis.

In a sense, this period of feeling lost and exhausted with high school has provided an opportunity for me to tap into my essence and sort out my life and what it is I wish to do before college, which may turn out to be useful.

In the meantime, I’ll continue waking up a little later and enduring the dragging weeks until those acceptance letters arrive.