Senior year: arguably the most anticipated achievement of childhood, is often wasted, this can be attributed to senioritis.

While USA Today describes Senioritis as “a cultural rite of passage for those at the college threshold,” it is more easily defined as laziness and anxiety to graduate that grows increasingly more intense as senior year progresses. In either case, along with the benefits of senior year comes a sense of laziness across the board among seniors.

However, senioritis too often receives an unhealthy, almost unrealistic amount of attention that causes it to become more manifest, thus causing a negative effect.

Although much of senioritis can be attributed towards having reached the finish line such as college acceptance and scholarships, perhaps an equally large portion can be attributed to a sense of entitlement to slack off because they feel as though they deserve to be lazy. There are three years of high school building up to senior year, in which students form their expectations of senior year. Among these expectations comes the right to develop senioritis.

The overabundance of attention and wide acceptance that senioritis is real gives students an excuse towards self-diagnosis. A prime example of this is College Board, who has gone as far as to designate a page of their website to addressing senioritis, giving tips on how to stay on track, such as keeping a calendar and maintaining a challenging course load.

Additionally, College Board recommends that students remain “excited, active, and focused throughout their senior year.” This can be done by changing the sense of entitlement as an excuse for laziness.

If we work to collectively ignore the dreaded “Senioritis,” perhaps the problems caused by it will be eliminated too.

Rather than encourage the idea of senior year as a waste of time, look it as the last opportunity you have. Don’t let others tendencies towards laziness become contagious, because senioritis turns into a huge excuse for laziness. Rather, look at the year as a final opportunity to succeed.