After 16 (or more) years of being engaged with the American schooling system, is it any wonder so many students seem to suffer from "senioritis" as the end of their final year draws near?
This so-called affliction gets a lot of attention this time of year, and with good reason. After all, when else do massive numbers of otherwise more-or-less conscientious students suddenly stop caring about their classroom performance?
But it's hard to tell how much of this disregard is due to a mysterious illness suffered only by final-semester high school and university seniors, and how much is due to a re-prioritizing that reveals to students on the cusp of graduation just how unimportant the strict pursuit of academics can be.
By the time a traditional student (the sort most affected by senioritis, from what I've been able to discern) graduates from an institution like UB, every detail of their life has been significantly impacted by school for upward of 16 years. It's a scary thought: From the friends you've made to the opportunities open to you, your education has shaped the person you are today. Even more frightening is the realization that, even if a student plans to pursue postgraduate education, school has become a choice - it is no longer something a student is compelled to do by virtue of age (primary and secondary education) or basic job qualification requirements (the pursuit of a college degree).
This realization seems to me to be a much better reason for decreased interest in pursuing strictly academic goals as the end of the semester draws near.
With graduation less than a month away, an entire world of possibilities promises to open up for the college graduate - provided they can prove their worthiness for jobs. While school performance may provide some indication of an ability to work in a given profession, I've only had my grades come up in one interview, ever - for my first job, as a sales associate at Media Play, when I was 17 years old. And even then, the only reason my grades came up at all was that I had a total lack of other qualitative information with which my prospective boss could make a decision.
Now, when I go on job interviews, the interviewers have been far more likely to ask about other jobs I've held, about my outside interests and about my interactions with people. While these factors may be influenced by how I'm doing in school, I haven't had to share my GPA or SAT since coming to college, except for scholarship and graduate applications - matters that had direct correlations to academia.
Work isn't the only thing that has made my own limited senioritis flare up in relation to the courses I'm taking. In fact, the only reason I've been able to maintain an interest in my schoolwork is because it's all directly related to the post-graduation paths I want to pursue.
Whether I'm writing for a playwriting class, viewing videos, attending seminars with noted industry professionals within my department or working here at the paper, my education has changed from something I'm subjected to into a means by which I can pursue my own goals.
There are things more important than school. Family and happiness are two of them. Being able to live so that you can look in the mirror without feeling guilty about the choices you've made is another. When there are bills to pay, there are even times when commitments to work may supersede those to a class. Hopefully, by the time students have reached their final semesters of college, they'll have gained an ability to distinguish the times when they have a true commitment to something outside of class from the days when they simply "want a break." That said, even the need for "mental health days" seems to me a valid reason for skipping the occasional lecture.
To professors and underclassmen, this may look like senioritis, and in terms of the behavior of high school seniors, this fancy way of saying "you lazy slackers" may be exactly on the mark.
But in the case of graduating college students looking out at a terrifying leap into self-sufficiency, labeling the reprioritizing of responsibilities, desires and goals as some mythical combination of psychic burnout and the desire to stop being productive hardly takes into account all the factors that cause this "disease."
