The Toxic Mixture of Senioritis and E-Learning

Gwendalyn Waggoner, Editor

Similar to most high school students, I am often drawn to procrastination. I prefer to spend my time at home binge watching on Netflix rather than doing the 20 minute assignment due the next day. Don’t get me wrong, this is not how I wish I operated. Every time I get an assignment, I remind myself how easy it will be to do if I eliminate the stressor of a rapidly approaching deadline. Despite my awareness of this procrastination problem, I always crawled my way back to the unsettling comfort of stress. 

Like most seniors, before spring break I was catching a bad case of senioritis. If you are unaware of senioritis, despite the name, it is not something a doctor can diagnose nor prescribe anything to cure it. Senioritis is the longing to leave, the realness of graduation approaches, and seniors seem anxious to say goodbye to all of the school work. Now, senioritis has found its way into my home. 

With the current situation of E-Learning, procrastination has risen to an all-time high. At school, it was easy to wait until the night before to finally finish that assignment. Nonetheless, it always got done and turned in at school. I admit, sometimes it was done in RockTime or in the cafeteria but, for me, I dreaded seeing the look of disappointment on my teachers’ faces when I approached them empty handed. Now, if an assignment is due at 11:59 pm I start working at 11:00 pm, recently I have lacked all motivation to complete any assignments. I question whether or not it is even worth completing because it barely makes a dent in my 4.1 GPA, and will I even be able to say I have that GPA if classes are pass/fail? I no longer stress myself out over assignments, but I also have been putting less effort into them altogether. It seems easier to hide from responsibility when there is no one there encouraging you to do the work.

To all the teachers, I apologize for my lack of motivation and I do appreciate all of the work you all are putting in to keep us learning. To all the students, I know it seems impossible and inspiration is sparse as you quarantine yourself within the same walls, but we are almost there, we are creating an amazing story. Some day, we will be the epitome of the “back in my day” memes, and one day we will look back and see that we were able to keep our heads up during a time it seemed easier to look down.