Suffering From SENIORITIS

By: Grace Huewe and Ava Leidenfrost

There’s one minute until the bell kicks o second hour and Claire Fredman is racing from the student parking lot to get to class, careful not to spill her Starbucks Pink Drink while pounding on the door that is locked because of seniors like her. Counting down just ten days left of high school, Fredman can’t bring herself to sit through all 46 class periods that remain.

Taking on her 15th year at Ladue, Fredman is starting to feel burnt out. Senioritis is getting real for her and her friends and it’s becoming easier and easier to skip class, guilt-free. Senior year is very di erent when it comes to independence for many seniors. Already being committed to college takes the pressure o of grades, so many seniors are feeling as though there really is no point in showing up at school. Fredman has recently sealed the deal with the University of Tampa, and although she already considers herself a college girl, she is still grateful for her Ladue experience.

“This year has been so fun. I like being a senior. It's very di erent from all other years because I feel more independent, especially since I committed to college,” Fredman said.

Not showing up to class is a tendency that has gotten worse and worse for Fredman as the year progresses.

“At this point, I don't even have to text my mom to tell her I'm coming home and leaving. I'll just show up at the house and leave school which is not the best habit, but, I'm a senior, I have two weeks left of school so what are they going to do,” Fredman said.

Genie Hong is almost through with her 14th year of teaching at Ladue and she has had many experiences with seniors in her trigonometry and college algebra classes. Throughout Hong’s interactions with her senior students, she has realized how senioritis a ects her classes daily and how they run.

“It has a domino e ect. So when more students don't want to do things, they kind of encourage and in uence other people to not do things and so it de nitely changes the dynamics of a classroom,” Hong said.

In her class, slacking o does not go unnoticed. As the year comes to an end, more and more students turn in less and less work and put little e ort into their classes.

“My seniors are becoming less enthusiastic about being at school and doing schoolwork and I have had to nd di erent ways to encourage them to participate,” Hong said.

Bobby Keller, another Ladue senior, can relate to Fredman’s struggles with school commitment. He looks forward to attending Texas Christian University in the fall. With a perfect 36 on the ACT, people may expect Keller to defy the bad habits of senioritis, but that is not the case.

“I don't think I've done an assignment that was not in-class work in probably a month. I probably go to two out of my four classes a day on average,” Keller said.

Where to?

While these statistics might be alarming to some, the majority of Keller and Fredman’s friends have the exact same viewpoints on school: it does not matter.

“We all don't do anything. No one does a single thing. There is no commitment to school to speak of,” Keller said.

Seniors have proven that even after putting forth four years of hard work into high school, there’s really no getting around senioritis and its drawbacks. Fredman’s sights are too closely set on the future and all that’s to come that high school seems small and worthless at this point.

“There's just always going to be days where I really don’t want to be at school. I'll be in second hour and I’ll feel like leaving because I don't really care anymore. Senioritis causes me to not want to do work, but then it's like, I'm almost there. I need to do it,” Fredman said.