The Cure to Senioritis
March 8, 2018
Senior year is one of the most important year of our lives; it’s the end of our high school career where we are tasked to make decisions that will impact the rest of our lives. Much of senior year is occupied with working on college applications, AP examinations, and our final classes of high school. As we approach the end, seniors contract a disease commonly referred to as senioritis. Many schools have developed solutions to help seniors utilize their final months before school is out when they are finished their APs and have received their decisions from colleges.
Our school’s resolution is for seniors to have no exams in classes where their average is an 85% or higher. This is not an effective solution to the problem at hand. Seniors still have to sit in classes that seem pointless and many feel as though they are just wasting away time until school ends. On top of that, some seniors work twice as hard than their peers and still may not receive the coveted 85%. Other schools have solutions for these problems which include letting seniors out after AP exams and having seniors get jobs or internships. A group of staff members have gotten together to try to address the issues with current system and come up with a better system that is beneficial for both students and teachers. I have been fortunate to interview a few members of our faculty, including Scott Carneal and Candice Ashton.
So why do seniors have to stay in school? Are there benefits? Seniors become rowdy and disruptive to juniors and underclassmen in their classes. However, some faculty believe that letting seniors out of school is the easy way out; they think that teachers should learn of ways to keep seniors involved in the class. “Letting seniors out as a resolution to their behavior is not a good solution” said Candice. However, there are very few options to resolve the problem. All in all, there is nothing else to do so why should we stay in class for an extra month in a half passing time until school lets out?
Let us out! Some members of faculty see no point in holding seniors in school for their classes. We are one of the few schools in the area that keep seniors in school until the very last day. St. Anselm’s, one of the top academic schools in the area let seniors out after the completion of AP exams. However, this school isn’t cheap. “It’s not like parents are getting a refund for month of school we are missing” said Candice. Would the school waive the fee for that final month of instruction, or would that be to much of a burden on the school?
Letting Seniors out is beneficial to everyone – students, teachers, and parents alike. Seniors get to make better use of their time working, planning and relaxing before they make one of the biggest transition of their lives. We are done, let us graduate and start our adult lives in the real world. What do you think?
Image: https://plexuss.com/news/article/11-senioritis-symptoms.
Scout Crooke • Mar 18, 2018 at 4:52 pm
This article is very interesting and I never thought about this topic before, probably because I am still a sophomore. I feel like I would fell the same way after finishing AP exams and only having a little time of school left. One question to counter this argument would be; why don’t seniors want to finish learning all of the topics in their course to gain more knowledge? because knowledge is good, right? However, then another question comes up: how much will the students actually remember from that last month of class and how much of it is actually important? The answers to these questions may vary and depending on the class, some students might want to stay in class to finish off the year with more knowledge. However, based on my interactions with many adults, many of them don’t remember what they learned during the last part of their senior year. I think that having seniors get jobs and internships after the AP exams is a good idea because internships and jobs are great because they gives students a way to learn more about what profession they might want to do, a lot of other good experiences, and some get paid. Ultimately, I agree with this article and the fact that these concerns and problems should be addressed and be open to discussion.
Christina Song • Mar 14, 2018 at 1:28 pm
“Let us out!” hahaha I can relate to this article so much. I hear what Candice said about parents not getting on the months we miss but at the same time I feel like providing an internship opportunity for seniors during that time can be really effective. Honestly, just let us out.