“I’m burnt out… I’ve given up.” A plague has been brought to Carrillo

Graphic inspired The Oregon Trail, replaced with senioritis (Wyett Pinney / The Puma Prensa)

By Wyett Pinney Photo Editor, Miguel Ramirez Staff Writer

Senioritis is defined as “the severe drop in motivation, effort, and academic focus experienced by students nearing the end of high school or college” (Urban Dictionary). This phenomenon has been prevalent in most high schools in the United States so much so that it has become an expected event in a student's high school career.

But a new aspect of this phenomenon has begun to sprout with more students earlier than senior year, falling behind on their school work. This trend happens to be more prevalent in more highly academic schools with more demanding course loads. 

These more tremendous course loads often overwork and exhaust the students so much that they often end up being burnt out. Causing them to begin falling behind on their classwork. This leads to a lot of habits such as students repeatedly skipping school and procrastinating assignments. In some cases, the students do not only suffer in their high school career but it disrupts and often makes their future careers more difficult.

This horrific disease has managed to escape senior year and starts happening among juniors, which at worst can result in juniors to stifle themselves by lowering the quality of classes they take in their senior year, affecting their applications. It could create bad habits going into senior year, like skipping and procrastinating.

This problem is heavily prevalent in Maria Carrillo High School especially with its sheer amount of students taking on heavy workloads including courseloads with AP, Honors, and other advanced classes being paired with extracurricular activities such as clubs and sports. 

Senioritis is the result of academic burnout and the lack of reason for staying on campus or participating not being evident, evolving over time. It has now spread past the senior year as the result of the weight of academically challenging classes breaking students. 

When asked about his workload before his AP tests, junior Ben Kane said “I’m burnt out… I’ve given up.” This is what the academic pressure does to students. It makes completing assignments feel impossible and focusing on a subject difficult.

When asked about tricks to counteract burn out, another junior Andy Burgey said “just keep doing the bare minimum, just keep getting grades in the book.” Having a zero in the gradebook is substantially more damaging to your grade then a 50-60% on an assignment. So just doing the bare minimum to maintain your grades is more than enough, when doing anything feels impossible.

Overall, Junioritis is problematic, it has a detrimental effect on the futures of students. Even though it may feel like there is no hope, the biggest trick is to just keep submitting assignments and doing the minimum to keep grades in order to not have a detrimental effect on your future.