Okay, so you are a person who never lets up on the gas pedal. I don’t actually think that is healthy. I expect even the anesthesiologist in my surgery to take a break every once in a while. No one is saying they shouldn’t push hard again when they are in college. But this is really one of the few chances they have in life to take something of a break without big consequences later on. Lighten up. The world would suck if everyone worked flat out every day of their lives.
Well, for one, your senior year of high school is when you’re 17/18 and your senior year of college is when you’re 21-23. That’s a pretty big maturity difference IMO.
Second- everything intparent said.
You two seem to be jumping to conclusions I didn’t propose. There is a time for breaks and a time for vacation. Taking one your whole Senior year might have consequences, though.
Furthermore, I have yet to read an application essay where the student declares their intent to “take a break” or a “vacation” as a Senior. They are usually full of passionate declarations and promises.
Yes. For their college and future career. Not for their senior year.
Did you have a bad experience senior year or something? You seem especially uptight about this.
I am in grad school and have long since dropped all high school stuff off of my CV. No one has ever asked about my senior year grades, classes, or anything else. I’m really at a loss as to how this could affect you in the long term unless you’re the extreme minority that flunked classes senior year after getting into a good college or getting a scholarship.
Fwiw, even with my senioritis, I never lost my scholarships and I had a higher GPA in undergrad than I did freshman to junior year of high school. Even managed to get 5s on my AP tests that year (even if going to class more than occasionally didn’t happen after being able to sign myself out of school at 17).
In my family, we value doing our best all the time. I am quite aware that not everyone is like that.
That sounds exhausting.
Back when I was in school the real push was 10-12 grade (we had junior high then). It was easy to sustain that level of effort for 3 years and even then it was nothing like the academic or extracurricular expectations of today. Kids now get that “push” message from elementary school and if they don’t they certainly start in 8th grade. In my experience as a reasonably strong student you didn’t have to plot and maneuver to have very solid college options on the other side, and the state flagship was an afterthought. Times have changed but kids are still kids.
Not all seniors are wired the same, obviously. My D is taking a very rigorous schedule this year and has no intention of letting her grades slip, and many of her close friends feel the same way. She set goals and a standard for herself that she wants to uphold and the end is near anyway, so why slack off now? That’s her feeling about it anyway. But to each his own I guess.
Neither of my kids slacked their whole senior year, but they definitely let up some once their college acceptances were in hand. And both worked like fiends in college (oldest was Phi Beta Kappa, and youngest goes to a very rigorous STEM school where she works like crazy). Go ahead, OP, hassle your kids about this and judge them for letting up a bit this year. Just don’t be surprised when they push back and don’t want to spend time with you… the whole “tiger parent” thing doesn’t really make for good relationships with your kids long term, IMHO.
Which part?
“Doing your best”?
Or the words “all the time”?
All the time.
Look, I get working hard. I’ve worked full time since I was 18 and received a near 4.0 in both undergrad and grad school. My schedule last semester was disgusting but I pulled through and survived with my highest GPA ever. But you know what happened? I burned out. I cried at the end of the semester because I hadn’t had a day to myself in nearly 4 months. I vowed to never do that again.
There is a time for work and a time to relax. You need to find a balance or both sides of your life will suffer.
I don’t care for the term “senioritis” because it seems a bit pejorative.
After the last 18 months or so of working crazy hard, my D is exhausted. As her parent, I’m just not going to push her to the extent that she was being pushed a year ago.
“In my family, we value doing our best all the time. I am quite aware that not everyone is like that.”
We do too, OP. But we don’t define it quite like you do. Sometimes doing one’s best requires pulling back a bit, regrouping, getting ready for the next big challenge. My D was really excited to receive an acceptance from her top school last week, and cannot wait to start. That is more than enough for me.
As a senior myself, I can definitely affirm that senioritis is a real, and very common, occurrence. It honestly is just overexertion. After a whole semester of trying to maintain an excessively difficult course load as well as handle college applications to many schools with extra essays, a break is well needed. That’s not a free pass to just give up and quit second semester, however, a little drop in grades is acceptable and expected by colleges.
I think it’s also a maturity thing. Seniors have been working their butts off through four years of high expectations, now as the oldest group in the school, high school starts to feel juvenile and students are ready to get out.
To those of you parents who are smug about their high school seniors not succumbing to senioritis: It’s only February 1st. There are four months of high school left, and believe me that’s plenty of time for a little bout of senioritis. As someone who has been in your shoes, I caution against hubris on this subject.
I always thought the -itis suffix made it seem decidedly nonpejorative.
People can’t help getting sick, unless you believe in vengeful deities.
@JHS if you are referring to my post as smug I humbly disagree with you. I said that all kids are wired differently. My D is happy to be a senior and is happy that HS is almost over and is very much looking forward to college in August. However, I guess there are varying degrees of “senioritis” and my D will not let her grades slip. That’s how she is wired. Nothing wrong with that at all.
Some kids are going to be relatively immune to Senioritis because they genuinely love learning.
Talk to me in June, both of you. Yours are not the only children in the world who are “wired” for high grades and “genuinely love learning.” And it’s true that some of those kids never succumb to some form of senioritis. Just not many of them. It has nothing to do with success in college or in later life, nothing to do with the adequacy of your parenting, and absolutely, positively nothing to do with genuine love of learning. It is possible, after all, to genuinely love learning things that have not been assigned as homework or included in an AP or IB test.
I’ve long since learned that learning and schooling do not always go hand in hand. 
@romanigypsyeyes I’m sure it’s been said before, but good students are those who can take all kinds of situations and turn them into learning situations. “Schooling” situations are particularly easy to do that with.