Losing the spark

Isabel Rodriguez, ‘22

Tired and slowly losing motivation, I typed “current events” into the search bar, and willed something to appear that would provide me with the new idea I so badly needed. The New York Times’ website appeared as the first result, and without wasting time, I clicked.

Scrolling past updates on Russia and Ukraine, inflation rates and political stories that seemed never-ending, I became even more disheartened. Don’t get me wrong, those stories are all very important, but I wanted a story that would be relatable.

Suddenly, I saw the title that was my saving grace: “19 Extremely Easy Recipes for When You’re Burned Out.” The first sentence of the description read, “Tired of….everything?” I automatically responded in my head: Yes, yes I am.

As a SENIOR in the final quarter of her high school career, I can’t seem to find the motivation to do much of anything. After the first semester ended and my college applications had been sent out, all I had left to do was wait. With one acceptance and one rejection in my back pocket, I set my sights on life post-high school. Suddenly, worrying about AP exams seemed like a thing of past years, and relatively harmless (formal apology to all my AP teachers, I promise it’s nothing personal).

Unfortunately, my “senioritis” affliction is actually a real thing and more than just a joke parents use to tease you. According to a 2017 survey done by NYU’s Steinhardt

School of Culture, Education and Human Development, the majority of seniors agreed that they would face a motivational drop-off in their second semester. In contrast, the majority of freshmen, sophomores and juniors believed they would be largely unaffected by “senioritis” in the future, despite the widely known fact of the second-semestersenior-year motivation dropoff. What goes largely unrecognized is that similar effects of the infamous “senioritis” are present in the much larger, all-encompassing term: “burnout.”

Dealing with burnout in high school

Alonzo Montgomery, ‘23

“They’re not dino shaped, though.”

That statement was confusing for multiple reasons, the main one being that it simply lacked context.

We, as people, rely on context a lot more than we think. We live in an age where we can talk to people with the press of a button, and when we don’t feel like face to face interaction, we text using acronyms and abbreviations.

A good example of the importance of context is the first sentence of this article.