<p>i am having senioritis right now :)</p>
<p>study for AP comparative quiz or surf the net?</p>
<p>hmmm... that's an easy decision!</p>
<p>String a whole bunch of these thoughts together for weeks or months at a time and you have a running diary on senioritis. It owuld be a brilliant book. Only...we're all too lazy to write one.</p>
<p>Here's to fun!</p>
<p>Considering that I'm a senior, and I'm perusing this thread and blasting folk-rock instead of doing physics homework, I'll let you guess how I feel about senioritis.</p>
<p>In all seriousness, though, I haven't stopped functioning. I've just been putting a bit less energy into serious academics, and more into my tutoring and leading the Quiz Bowl team and, soon enough, my senior project- things I want to do, as opposed to what's just required. I'm still getting things done, but if I'm tired and there's an AP psych assignment due, I won't freak out over going to bed and putting off the work until study hall the next day. This seems to be my classmates' mentality as well- they're doing the schoolwork nightly, but no longer allowing it to consume their lives. It feels like a healthy little break to me.</p>
<p>My senioritis has really been a reevaluation of what's important to me for the rest of the school year. I really don't fret about grades as much (I am half Asian, so the tendency to freak out is still very strong) and yet I feel I'm learning more now than I did last year. I don't do voluntary homework except for the Calculus Class I'm aiding in (ironically I do more calculus homework as an aide/tutor than I ever did as a student) and I do the essays and assignments the way I want to, never the way they are intended. I wrote a 20 page paper on the Nietzschian themes in Hamlet, when it was supposed to be a 3-5 page "thematic" paper. The best thing is that some of my teachers are allowing me to not do the required assignments and only work on the larger projects (since I got a 5 on our AP lit practice exam, I'm excempt from all non-essay or reading homework). I've relearned the guitar and I've had the chance to go back to doing things I enjoy for no other reason than the fact that I enjoy them. </p>
<p>My senior year motto has been to study smarter not harder.</p>
<p>Senioritis has hit me in full. I literally have to force myself to write every single word of every single assignment. It's torturous. There's just no impetus to do my best anymore. The only things I'm responsible for are getting good AP scores and getting at least a B- in every class.</p>
<p>zarathustra: Lucky. I got a 5 on the <em>actual</em> AP Lit exam (which I took last year due to a clerical error), and my AP Lit teacher doesn't give me any sort of exemption whatsoever.</p>
<p>Here I am, posting at 1:19 in the morning, blaring Marley and Cash and talking on the phone with my girlfriend. I got accepted ED to a great school, I finished four AP classes the first semester, i've got two more this semester and a graduation requirement to fulfill. Earlier, I went for a swim, played a long and impassioned game of Texas Hold'em with some buds, and watched The Office. Tomorrow is friday, and I plan on sleeping in... maybe waking up in time for AP Calculus. Why? Because the teacher is passionate about real things. Last class, he went on a twenty minute rant because he felt strongly about something written in the newspaper. I digress, but I will say that having real work experience has been amazing for me: I worked full time this summer and got to see that work didn't have to reek of formaldehyde. School is a conundrum within itself, because the most important thing for kids to learn is the quality of ingenuity, and it seems like the American high school model only tries to produce a generation of workhorses that will eventually increase GDP.</p>
<p>Cheers to second semester seniors.</p>
<p>It would seem to me that what we do in senior year can really be compressed into one semester at most, or could be eliminate altogether in favor of the gap year suggested by an earlier post. Prolonging senior year into the second semester only makes for even more tired students who, in addition to being anxious to get admitted to colleges, are just plain tired of school. Really now, why should we be made to do something that will only hurt rather than help?</p>
<p>Or start the college application process at the beginning of the second semester of the senior year instead at the beginning of the junior year. This will make kids learn more and have less stress. Why graduate admission and medical school admission don't put a lot of stress on college students but undergraduate admission makes high school students suffer? Something is terribly wrong here. I wonder how college admission officers applied to college when they were young.</p>
<p>I absolutely agree. While senioritis is seen as a plague by many, it seems to me as more of a manner of relaxing the over-worked mental and physical teenage mental computer-allowing us to enter Screensaver mode and possible even stand-by. I myself elected to relax my senior year and have dropped out of several EC's which I no longer felt were at all effective or enjoyable. I have in turn received a heaping helping of much-needed sanity.</p>
<p>But one must remember not to allow us to shut-down as we shall all be rudely awakened by the brutish keystrokes of college life come September.</p>
<p>I definitely agree with the article.</p>
<p>My senior year, I decided, should be re****l. I decided to take 5 classes and be out of school by 11:15 every other day (block scheduling), and I decided not to participate in the Spring Musical, which is a very time-demanding commitment and which I stopped enjoying last year.</p>
<p>I have no desire to go to school anymore. I've already decided where I'm going next fall, so what's the point in staying in high school? I almost wish I would've taken my mother's advice and graduated in January.</p>
<p>I was talking to a friend about my "I'm just done with high school" mentality, and she told me that it's a good thing when you feel that way because it means you're ready to move on. And I must say I agree with her.</p>
<p>I didn't even go to school on Friday because I'm just sick of it.</p>
<p>I think the worst part for a lot of us is that we still do the work, so our grades don't suffer. So there's no reason for us to change.</p>
<p><em>Sigh</em> I wish Senior year was only a semester.</p>
<p>I must say, though, a lot of my teachers have the right idea. The only real (ie multiple-choice) finals I had to take were the ones the district required. The rest gave projects or short (3-5 pages double-spaced) essays. My philosophy teacher assigned us a famous Philosopher and had us to a comic strip and/or political cartoon and/or skit (but I don't think anyone did a skit) on his/her basic theory. And, this Thursday, we're taking a field trip to the Getty Museum for our Aesthetics unit. I can't remember the last field trip I went on...</p>
<p>And the classes do seem to be getting more "fun" as the year draws to a close (graduation is FOUR MONTHS FROM TOMORROW!!!!). In my Bible as Literature Class (one of my district's Senior English Electives, so the public school gets away with it), we're doing a Mock Trial and putting King Saul in court for premeditated attempted murder, multiple counts of manslaughter and "flagrant disregard for God's law as stated in Exodus 20:1-17" (I'm a prosecutor ^_^).</p>
<p>In Government, we're holding elections for "President" and, once elections are over, we're going to have congress and pass bills on how the class should be run.</p>
<p>I think kids shooting for med school feel lots of stress. Make or break interviews, bad odds at every school, etc.</p>
<p>Wow...I'm seeing people here talking about how they have 10 free unexcused absenses per semester... We only have 5...</p>
<p>I'm not sure what I think about this 2nd semester...Part of me loves it because it's so nice to have the chance to work for the sake of learning--like I used to a couple years ago. At the same time, I'm so tired of working for other reasons, that I don't even want to work for the sake of learning. I basically want to slack off for a while, until I start missing school, and THEN come back and like it.</p>
<p>It's driving me crazy. Because a few weeks ago I swore that in college I would only do work I wanted to do, etc. Because that's how it SHOULD be. But then I started thinking about how you need certain grades--even in college--to go to study abroad programs or grad school later. So, when exactly do I get to stop working for the FUTURE and start working because I WANT to NOW...?</p>
<p>I kinda want to quit society!</p>
<p>You shouldn't be getting good grades because you want to go to grad school while you're in undergrad, you should be getting good grades because you're genuinely interested in the material you're taking classes in.</p>
<p>Also, my HS gave us no unexcused absences. I kept forgetting to ask my parents for a note after I had been home sick for a day and at the end of the week they threatened me with detention if I didn't have an excuse card filled out Monday morning. :(</p>
<p>"You shouldn't be getting good grades because you want to go to grad school while you're in undergrad, you should be getting good grades because you're genuinely interested in the material you're taking classes in."</p>
<p>That is not a world that exists for many. You do what you need to do to reach a goal. It's not always fun or easy.</p>
<p>In our county, once you reach 18 you can (after an easy application process) attain "age of majority" status, in which you can write your own excuses and sign yourself out of school. I have 17 excused absences this year and 0 unexcused because of "chronic headaches." I love being 18.</p>
<p>^We can do that too (at least in my school district).</p>
<p>Unfortunately I won't be 18 before graduation. <em>sigh</em> DARN YOU SEPTEMBER BIRTHDAY.</p>
<p>The number of unexcused absences seniors can have at my school without flunking out drops from 3 to 1 for second semester. and that's only if you don't have any excused absences. and you can only have 5 of those (vs 7 before). so like, if you get sick a lot you're done for. our science team last year ran into a lot of trouble because a few seniors had been sick, and leaving for Olympiad Nationals entailed three days of absences. thankfully they made excuses for us, since they figured we're probably good kids and all, which we are. =D</p>
<p>I don't know about senioritis. I've been completing my work for so long that just leaving it there gives me an uneasy feeling. I have to finish my work, no matter how long it takes or how late I stay up. Social conditioning much?</p>
<p>The most ridiculuos part of that second-semester-senior thing hit us recently: the college acceptances started to come (yay! ;)), only to find my D being unable to go visiting, for making an informed decision which would greatly influence her life. First it was acceptance from the "rolling admission" college, which we hadn't visited so far and hoped to do so during February school break ... but then DD told us that she is too tired to go anywhere right now and really needs that break to recharge her "bateries" at home. OK, I thought, maybe she is not so much interested in that particular far-away school, and I am not really interested in sending her that far away from home. ;) Fine, we stayed home.</p>
<p>Then UCSD sent her an invitation to its "Scholars' Day", which probably means she is in, and is given a fine opportunity to take a closer look at the school (which she liked very much on our first, very fast-paced and superficial visit), probably, in the more advantageous way than many others will have it on the regular "accepted students" event. After me telling her that - what do I hear? You won't believe it ;) - "Oh, no, it's on Friday, I can't miss the school and my c/c Japanese class that much! I won't be able to catch up!" The total lost of perspective and unability to see THE BIG PICTURE ... but in some way, I can see her point: her classes are still rigorous and fast-paced, the homework amount is still formidable, those second-semester grades still do count for some extent ... and she still tries not to abandon completely her EC responsibilities (sometimes UCs do check them, right? ;)). Being already terribly burn out :( and trying to fight seniorities moods (episodes of lost motivation to do anything productive :(), she does have hard time catching up every time she needs to miss school ... and nobody knows for sure how much of the not-catching-up could she "afford" without fear of the revoked acceptances (from some of her dream schools). Any suggestions? ;)</p>
<p>^Just allow her to recharge. Most schools don't require an acceptance/denial of acception until May, so you have plenty of time to do visits. I would suggest over Spring Break.</p>