Imagine waking up at 5:30 every morning to go lift or for a practice. Then you go to school for eight hours a day. After school, you go straight to work. Finally, you end your day with off-season volleyball practice that goes until ten. On the nights you don’t have practice, you are going to the high school games to support your friends. Most nights, you are not getting home until 10 p.m. But wait, you can’t go to bed yet because you have an hour’s worth of homework to do. That hour ends up taking a little longer because your eyes are getting heavy and homework is the last thing you want to do. Because you stay up late doing homework, you are tired the next day in school, causing you to not want to be there. If this experience sounds familiar, you might be experiencing junioritis.

Junioritis: the lack of motivation felt by students who are reaching the end of their courses. This may sound familiar; it probably reminds you of senioritis. It is the exact same thing except it happens to juniors. Whether it is ACT practice, sports, jobs, family and friends, church, significant others or classes, some juniors have a few too many things on their plate and are having junioritis. 

As we grow up, we take on more responsibilities, especially junior year. It is our year to take harder classes, become bigger leaders and start preparing for college. Some new responsibilities that we are taking on are ACT prep and jobs. Jobs are new: we are 16 or 17 and can drive now.  We need to make money in order to move onto the next chapter in our lives. Stepping up and taking on leadership roles increased the pressure that we are feeling. We feel obligated to help out and go to everything. We devote our time and energy to make other people better along with ourselves. Once again, it is tiring.

Life sure is tiring, and high school doesn’t make it any better. There are multiple solutions that we can come up with ourselves, but I also believe that schools need to take a step back with the pressure put on juniors. Teachers, give us some more class time or an extra day to do our homework. Coaches, just give us a second to breathe and think about what is going on. High school IS tiring, and junioritis is a real thing. Just give us a second to enjoy what is happening in our lives right now. 

My advice for all of the juniors that are struggling with junioritis is to prioritize your time. If you have a moment where you are scrolling on your phone, put your phone down and get out your homework. Do your homework then so you can enjoy your time later. You can also try to explain your situation. Respectfully tell the teachers how you feel, and maybe they will understand. And perhaps the best solution for junioritis is to act on our worries. Instead of just talking about our struggles, let’s act on them and do what we can to fix them. Let’s figure it out so we can take a deep breath and enjoy our final years of high school.