Senioritis — we’ve all experienced it in one form or another. It’s that feeling you get when you lack all motivation to finish your schoolwork. You spend hours upon hours contemplating what you’re doing with your life and convincing yourself you don’t really need a degree to be successful. You think, “Steve Jobs was a college dropout and he seemed to do just fine.” Whether these thoughts started from kindergarten or just this month, we can all relate to the feeling of having zero incentive to do our work. So, what can we do to boost our morale and push through during these last few months before summer? I’m here to offer you some tips on how to rid yourself of senioritis.
It’s easy to lose drive when we’re this close to summer. We begin to slack off in classes and mentally check out of lectures. Tabitha Parker, the current SGA president and a senior psychology major, stated how she perseveres when college life becomes too monotonous.
“I usually lose motivation in classes with a simple lecture style structure because I seek engagement in the classroom,” Parker said. “To cope, I tend to find a concept I enjoy and elaborate on it in a way that makes it more personal and relevant.”
In order to overcome senioritis, we can personalize the class material we are learning. As concepts seem to become more monotonous, we can find ways to spruce them up. We can adapt them to our own lives and stories, putting them in terms that are less academic and more personal.
If you’re a senior, it might help to think of all the lasts you’ll be having in your college career. For example, when you don’t feel like pulling an all-nighter to write a paper or to study for a test just think, “this may be the last all-nighter I ever have to pull.” This thought may excite you but it should also prompt you to cherish those extra hours of work. It should cause you to do your best and put all you have into your work. Unless you’re going to grad school, this is probably the last time you’ll ever actively study the concepts and lessons that you have been taught throughout college. You should want to take as much of that information with you as possible, instead of learning it all just to forget it the next day.
Another aspect in which senioritis affects APU students is chapel. The next time you don’t want to leave your bed to go to chapel, think about how you won’t be able to attend it after graduation. When you’re in chapel, take a step back and look around at everything. Remember how great it is to be able to openly praise God with hundreds of your peers. Chances are you won’t be in a setting comparable to chapel again. Change your mindset from “how much longer do I have to do this?” to “this is the last time I’m going to get to do this.”
Believe it or not, you’re going to miss this place one day. It may not feel like you will right now because of all the work and stress that just keeps piling up but you will inevitably miss APU and grow to appreciate all the hardships that occurred throughout your college career. Think of all the memories you’ve created and can still create here. Someday, the adventures you have here will be the stories you tell to your grandchildren and, hopefully, you will have exciting stories to recount to them.
Arianna Guerra, an APU alumni who graduated in 2016, offered her advice on how she dealt with senioritis.
“The only thing that might actually be helpful is thinking of all the things and people you’ll miss,” Guerra said. “In the scope of your whole life, your four years of college goes by so quickly. Focus on how fleeting this time of your life is, and you won’t be in rush for it to be over; you’ll be savoring every second.”
Don’t try to rush through your time in college because time moves quickly enough without prompting. Instead, view every day as a chance to create a new story or memory that you can look back on after your time at APU has come to an end. None of this is to say that college is ultimately the highlight of your life. Despite what everyone says, these probably aren’t the best years you are ever going to have. However, you can and should make the most of them.
The last thing that might cure your senioritis is realizing that you’ve come this far so you might as well finish. There are weeks that probably make you want to drop out and leave college. However, as my parents always say, “You didn’t come this far to give up.”
Right now, you’re in the final stretch of a race. You’ve trained to make it to the finals and here you are. You’re coming close to the end. This likely feels like the hardest part because you’ve expended so much energy and don’t think you have any more to give. However, the finish line is in sight and you can’t give up now. You have to finish. Push yourself to finish out these last couple months of school before graduation or summer. You’ll be much prouder of yourself if you finish strong than if you give up right near the end. Change any negative mindsets you have about being at college and go out and make whatever time you have left at APU memorable.
Guerra offered some closing words of encouragement for students. “You’ll remember the experiences you had in college for the rest of your life, and the good memories you made with your friends will far outweigh the unpleasant late nights of studying and writing papers.”