The Senior Struggle

The+Senior+Struggle

You can already feel it. The heat sinking into your skin, wet grass sticking to your feet after a water balloon fight and ice-cream galore. It’s almost summer.

As the end of the school year nears, the sweet summer sun is on all of our minds. For a certain group of students, the wait is difficult to bear. 

Seniors are more excited than ever for the end of the school year to get here. As a result, many are suffering from a horrifying disease that causes seniors to show symptoms of tiredness, staring at the wall in class, tardiness or overall absence and a hatred for freshmen. The dreaded senioritis. 

While it is an illness no doctor can diagnose, any teacher can see it from a mile away.

One senior by the name of Audrey Raffensberger has had a unique experience with it.

Raffensberger has gone to PLHS since freshman year. Since then, she has felt the hype and rush to senior year. A big question on many people’s minds is, has senior year been as amazing as anyone thought? 

“It has fallen short in some aspects, especially due to covid.” Raffensberger said, “I’m excited for the senior’s last day and also for prom to come along.”

Just like any other senior, Raffensberger has a mix of emotions when it comes to the end of senior year.

“I’m excited, but also very nervous.” Raffensberger said, “I’m going to be moving on to a whole new chapter, but I’ll miss the memories I’ve made here.”

Excitement and nervousness are perfectly normal for any senior. The same goes for tiredness and exhaustion.

“I haven’t felt super impacted by [senioritis], thanks to the health academy which keeps me busy,” Raffensberger said, “but I definitely know people who have and there are plenty of days where I’m like, tired and don’t want to do anything.”

Though Raffensberger hasn’t had much of an experience with senioritis, other seniors can’t relate. One in particular being senior Damon Jelani.

“I’ve been at PLHS since my sophomore year,” Jelani said. “So for 3 years.”

Even though Jelani hasn’t gone to PLHS for all 4 years, he still has heard all of the hype for senior year since he first started. But, it hasn’t been everything everyone said it would be.

“I think people make it sound like it’s one big party,” Jelani said. “But it isn’t, you still have to do work and, you know, be an actual student.”

Jelani has felt much more impacted by senioritis than Raffensberger.

“A lot of days, I just don’t want to get up,” Jelani said, “ I made it this far, it is like the end of the marathon.”

While the experience for each individual senior is different, these two can agree senioritis is a real thing with real impacts on students.

As we wait for the waterslides, pools, and overall summer fun to come along, we must give a hand to our seniors for toughing it out this far, even the ones succumbing to the horrifying senioritis.

And as a final word to all of the seniors, remember this; it is not time throw all of your papers in the air and sprint out of the school till May 5th, so keep on pushing till then.