Senioritis (sometimes called “senior slide”) is a term describing a general lack of academic motivation and purpose that students have their senior year of high school. I’d heard about this concept for years from previous seniors, and now it’s my turn to come face to face with it.

Here’s where my case of senioritis stems from. I didn’t really experience it during my first semester of senior year, since I was juggling college applications and schoolwork. But now that it’s the second semester, I’ve completely submitted all of my college applications. It’s February, so all of my interviews are done as well. And yet, I don’t find out about my college results until March.

At the same time, I know that my grades don’t really matter — second semester grades don’t factor into admissions, and only the worst of grades could get me rescinded after admission into college. This means I can relax a bit on my schoolwork.

So I’ve got this huge chunk of free time now that applications are done; I’m in this limbo period before finding out where I’m going for the next 4 years of my life; and I know that my grades aren’t exactly my biggest priority right now. As a result of this, it’s been way too easy for me to simply zone out in my classes or coast in life in general. And I’ve definitely had moments this semester where I’ve done just that.

But lately I’ve been trying to combat this feeling, because I don’t want to simply relent and give in to senioritis. This has been my general approach so far:

In my classes, I try to stay dialed in because I’ve realized that the time actually passes by faster if I’m paying attention than if I’m not. So I’ve been consciously reminding myself to stay present when I catch myself checking out mentally.

For school in general, I’ve adopted the perspective of treating it like a day job. My school day lasts 7 hours, so I try to stay focused for as much of this time as I can — as if it were a day at work. Then I continue this focus for an hour after school to complete my “8 hour work day” — and most days, this allows me to knock out most, if not all, of my homework.

What this does is it frees up personal time. This is the final part of my plan to fight senioritis: working on meaningful personal projects. These give me direction and motivation, as I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts. Just having a few goals helps me organize my free time and allows me to be intentional with my time.

Of course, I still have days where I just want to lay around and do nothing. But by staying diligent while in school and having projects to occupy my time outside of school, I’ve so far been able to work through any passing feelings of listlessness brought on by senioritis.