the senior slump is REAL!
When hitting the last year of school, it’s common for students to catch a well-known contagious illness – Senioritis. While this disease isn’t deadly or painful by any means, it can cause issues when it comes to academics and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Senioritis is essentially defined as a decline in motivation and performance during your senior year of school, whether it’s high school or university.
i put the ‘pro’ in procrastinator
For most of my college experience, I’d like to say that I stay pretty proactive when it comes to getting assignments done. However, it’s been a struggle to get things done ahead of time when I’d much rather binge a tv show, read a book, or spend time with the people I love. Currently I’m in two literature classes and they both require reading every class, as well as a discussion post or essay almost every class. Since my classes aren’t too complicated and I finish around noon every day, I originally planned to be productive every day with the hours I had left in the day.
Then the first week of classes was over and I couldn’t find myself to care anymore.
The second I come home, I find myself relaxing on the couch with my roommate and spending hours watching our new show, Bridgerton, rather than start on my upcoming homework. Albeit, it doesn’t help that one of my classes has their assignments due at 6pm! I mean, what professor sets it at such an awkward time? Regardless, I will wait until the afternoon of the due date until I begin, because I can’t bring myself to care about it.
If I really break it down, i’m Exhausted.
Every morning I wake up and dread actually waking up. For the first few minutes, I’ll scroll through my various apps in order to get that shot of dopamine that I desperately need. This truly isn’t healthy either, in fact, my friend actually recommended the app Opal to me. It’s like the Screentime feature on an iPhone except it successfully blocks me off from touching certain apps for hours. While it has reduced my time on TikTok and Instagram, suddenly I’m watching YouTube shorts now? Great.
Regardless, the mornings that I’m supposed to be waking up early and heading to the gym, I’m utterly exhausted and lay in bed instead, then I spend the afternoon trying to divy up my day and end up leaving my homework until the last minute. Next thing I know, it’s close to 12-1 in the morning and the whole cycle begins again. If I had a whole free day to do absolutely nothing, I worry I wouldn’t be productive in the slightest.
How do I stop this??
Unfortunately I don’t have any great ideas for how to get off your phone, nor how to be more productive. Honestly it’s extremely frustrating; it feels as though I’m locked outside of my body, screaming at it to get up and do something but it refuses to listen to me. At the end of the day, senioritis has taught me a few lessons. One, a grade is never that serious; two, prioritizing my mental health is important; and three, life goes on and making memories is far more important than being a stickler to a routine. That being said, neglecting your academics isn’t something I recommend. Though I feel my motivation slipping, I still believe that it’s important to attend class and do your assignments, as much as you might not want to.