As the end of the school year approaches many seniors have begun to reflect on their overall experience in high school. Many look back at all the good memories they have had and also some of the bad memories. However, as the school year comes to an end during a pandemic, a different type of sickness has plagued more profusely than in previous years, and that is senioritis.

Seniors have long been deprived of motivation for their final year in high school. Many either do not show up for class or they choose to take easier classes than they should. Senior Gerrardo Torres claims that the COVID-19 pandemic has affected his motivation for school and when he completes his work.

“Hybrid really messed with the amount of effort I put into school,” Torres said. “I started procrastinating too much and for a longer amount of time.”

With a hybrid school schedule students are required to check in for each of their classes every day in order to take attendance. This allowed for students to sign in to their class and have the time in between classes to work on schoolwork if they chose to do so. Despite being given time to work on schoolwork, some students decided to do other things with their free time, such as sleep. Torres has found other things to do when he feels no motivation to do school work and they include watching TV streaming services, playing video games and even watching sports.

“To be honest I think that they simply don’t care at this point,” Torres said. “Especially with all of the uncertainty and everything.”

With a different school schedule and a new way of learning, students continue to struggle with feeling overwhelmed with everything they take part in. Senior Tjaden Simmons claims that with harder classes students end up getting more work, which in turn makes it hard to keep up.

“The way the schedule is now structured, in higher level classes, you’re at risk to come out of them with homework every single day,” Simmons said. “It makes it hard to keep up.”

Despite all of the commotion during a COVID-19 year, Simmons has been remaining optimistic and continues to move forward. Simmons claims that with the extra load of preparing for college it has been hard to keep up with everything going on. However he claims he just has to “keep swimming.”

“I’m a bit on edge, due to the stress of extra college stuff,” Simmons said. “I’m in the mindset of ‘Just Keep Swimming’.”

Despite the struggles and the lack of motivation students have experienced this year, both seniors look back at their time in school and are able to recall a handful of positive memories from them. Torres looks back at his time in high school as a whole and everything he has done in the past four years. This includes his participation in sports and being able to bond with teammates.

“Some memories that I’ll remember are mostly from my Spanish classes and the four soccer seasons I had here,” Torres said.

Simmons claims he will remember some of the events that happened this year, despite all of the uncertainty and struggle. This includes the amount of work for classes and the impact of having a new principal.

“At this point, everybody’s just ready to be done,” Simmons said. “With all of the changes this year it’s easy to focus on just graduating and not academic achievement.”