Senioritis: a crippling disease that strikes high school seniors, and oftentimes high school students as a whole. Symptoms include procrastination, general laziness, Netflix (or Disney plus, HBO GO, Hulu, anything really) binging, sleeping, avoiding responsibilities, and wishing time would slow down (or speed up to the point where graduation is next week). Let’s be real… . It’s the start of second semester, college apps are in, and senioritis is hitting us hard. Here are some ways to push past that extreme lack of motivation and finish up the end of high school in a more productive manner.

   For starters, remember that second-semester grades still matter. Granted, they may not have as much weight as first-semester grades when it comes to college admission, but colleges still care about how you finish out your final months of high school. Depending on your college or university’s policy, your acceptance could be rescinded if your grades drop below a certain point. Not to mention, if you need some extra motivation to keep those As or Bs, remember that some colleges provide scholarship money depending on your GPA; so, the better your grades, the more money you are likely to receive. With that in mind, get your assignments done and try your hardest to keep your grades up.

   Secondly, your absences and/or tardies might affect your ability to participate in senior activities, and if it gets really bad there’s a chance you’ll miss getting to walk at graduation. We know, we know. Getting up to go to school and sit at a desk doing barely anything for seven or so hours may seem impossible, but hey, welcome to the second semester of senior year. Saturday School is always an option, but if you can’t even make it to school on a weekday, getting here on a Saturday will be that much harder. Our advice is to pick one highlight or justification that you should go to school and make that your reason to push through another day. Whether it be a potluck or an assignment due, there’s always at least one reason to get to school in the morning.

   Finally, there’s the matter of nostalgia. Odds are, once you’ve graduated and moved on with life, you’ll look back and miss the good ol’ high school days. Between spending lots of time with your friends, Homecomings, lunchtime activities, and even the day-to-day burdens of being a high schooler, you don’t want to look back and wish you’d cherished it while it lasted. You want to look back and feel like you enjoyed it and made the most of it. Maybe you pick that as the reason to come to school every day.

   The bottom line is we’re still high school students, and with that title comes certain responsibilities. As much as we would all love to be living it up in college already, we still have to get through high school first. As painful as it may be, push through the senioritis and make these last few months of high school count.