It’s finally that time of year again. Spring is a time of new beginnings, sunshine, later sunsets, beautiful flowers blooming, and the dreaded spread of senioritis. With scholarship deadlines approaching, less time to work before college begins in the fall, and endless thoughts about what life has in store for each and every student, life can be a bit paralytic for seniors.  To say the least, this ‘virus’ is not an easy sickness to overcome.

Senioritis is defined as a supposed affliction of students in their final year of high school or college, characterized by a decline in motivation or performance, according to Urban Dictionary. Many senior students can attest to the fact that their motivation has significantly declined since the beginning of their freshman year. Senior Nancy Le thinks that both her freshman and senior year self are pretty similar time management wise, but not in the best way.

“Looking back at my freshman year self, I can definitely say that I have still not learned time management, but what has changed the most is the amount of responsibility I now have to take on as a senior,” Le said.

While some find senior year to be a strenuous struggle, others such as Nick Nahnybida have found themselves to be more confident in their work and in who they are.  

“When I was first going into high school, I was pretty terrified of all of the Spanish classes I had to take, and passing those made me feel better for my years to come,” Nahnybida said.

Nahnybida was not the only one who felt as though his trust in himself and his work improved as he aged. Senior Jackie Calderon felt as though her freshman year self was less responsible than she is now, and that the more responsibilities she added to her life, the easier it became to time manage.

“Now I am more responsible in my senior year, and I have a better sense of time management because of work and school together, which forced me to get better,” Calderon said.    

Although some students may have seemed to improve time management wise, the amount of work compared to the amount of time that seniors have can be far too much too handle all at once.

Calderon said that at the beginning of her senior year she only had to worry about one block’s worth of work. But now that she has a full schedule, her time is limited, and she never seems to have enough time and energy to accomplish all that she needs to.

“So far AP English has been my hardest class, and I’ve recently noticed a lack of motivation in myself because it is getting closer to the end of the year, and I feel so close to the finish line but it is still not quite here yet,” Calderon said.

Le also knows about the foreseen finish line, and her motivation lack, which started around the end of winter break. After both the winter and spring break came to an end, it seemed like too many glimpses of heaven to recover from.

“We seniors are so close to being done, [and] the graduation date is looming upon us,” Le said. “I am so ready for a fresh start and to finally start my life.”

The largest tell-tale sign of senioritis, though, can be seen in the comparison of motivation from the beginning of senior year to this very moment. Many, if not all, seniors at West started with a very high amount of motivation and a really low amount of stress, but now that is certainly not the case.

“At the beginning of the year my stress level was extremely low, with my motivation at an all time high. I always had assignments done on time, and was basically always on top of my game,” Le said. “Right now, my stress level is at an all time high, but my motivation has quite sadly hit rock bottom. It’s something about the last few months of school that makes it so hard to get things done correctly in every way.”

Although senioritis is still very present here, the Falcons will have to find a way to soar on until graduation. It may be tough, but it always will be, and has been for centuries past. Senioritis may be the ‘disease’ that never officially finds a cure.