All of us in our high school careers have heard this term thrown around as a joke. Once you get into senior year, the mentality of “senioritis” takes over. Google defines it as: “a supposed affliction of students in their final year of high school or college, characterized by a decline in motivation or performance.”

Most seniors agree that senioritis is something that is inevitable, while others said they felt more relaxed than usual. However, it’s not just the students from this high school that are experiencing the effects of senioritis. It’s the students all around the United States that experience this feeling of lack of motivation from this and COVID-19 as well.

But what about COVID-19 and how that affects senioritis in students? A study from DVC news does a poll study to determine the effects of senioritis with COVID-19 in just this one school. The results were shocking. 53 percent of students said they had senioritis, and 15.3 percent of students said they didn’t have it yet and the rest said they didn’t have it. According to a recent study done by Omniscient shows that 78 percent of all high school seniors experience senioritis nationally. This stat by itself is pretty astounding and pretty terrifying to imagine that almost 80 percent of all high schoolers nationwide are not exerting their maximum efforts into their final year.

With hybrid learning, more than half of students in each class are completing the course from their bedrooms. These students in the online format are more vulnerable to fall victim to senioritis. Most seniors especially during this year are experiencing this nasty “disease” that’s spreading among them causing their work ethic to decline at a rapid rate, and it’s happening due to many reasons.

Is there a way to fire back against senioritis and it’s bigger brother COVID-19 to take the year back into your own hands? According to CollegeXpress, a few methods you can use to shake it off is if still possible, crush senioritis before it starts, remember the end is near, try to work past your limits in order to get things done, maybe get involved in some clubs or extracurriculars that are still available, complete a checklist and if none of that really works ask your guidance counselor for help. Senioritis is something that affects a lot of seniors every year, but through different methods of self determination anyone can overcome the problems that they originally faced.