Jordan Allar
Sports Editor
While seniors eagerly await second semester, teachers dread it. The issue at hand is senior sliding. Second semester of senior year, seniors have or are close to making their college decision, and it is finally time to put their legs up and relax. It’s a given, right? Maybe not.
“Second-semester senior year, most people are already into colleges and so they just have to maintain a decent GPA in order to keep their spot at the college. So you can kind of do whatever as long as you don’t fail,” senior Meghan Chouanard said.
“Senioritis” or senior sliding used to have positive connotations for students. It meant coasting through their last semester in high school in anticipation of college entry in the fall, according to the New York Times.
Grades always matter and colleges are allowed to ask seniors who are applying to their school to ask for whatever grades from any semester, especially second semester. If grades decrease dramatically, college admissions may question if you are ready for that next step: college. 22 percent of colleges revoked an admissions offer in 2009, the most recent year [2015] that the group collected data of this sort, according to the National Association for College Admission Counseling.
“They don’t want a student who is going to come in and say they senior slided last year and may not have the study habits, nor the work ethic [for college],” senior Isa Chavez said.
Seniors are worn out from the numerous college essays and applications that they wrote and filled out. Second semester is full of lasts, eventually leading up to graduation. Therefore, the motivation to do school work is diminished.
“I have less motivation to come to school,” senior Lilly Anderson said.
“Well, I think it is somewhat natural. It’s probably in the students’ best interest to do whatever they can to keep up that rigor so that they don’t go through the slide and then have to climb up the mountain next year. It’s going to be an unreachable goal,” English teacher Mrs. Herring said.
Even though it is a stereotype for seniors to slide, some are still pushing to the end of the year.
“I care about my grades a lot and if they were bad I would be very bothered,” Anderson said.
It is common for seniors to take AP classes, and the exams for those tests are more towards the end of the semester, therefore slacking throughout second semester can make it hard to understand the content of the class if homework is not being completed. If a student gets a three or higher on an AP exam, that student may receive college credit, which can make college cost a little less due to passing.
For some seniors, sliding is inevitable, but the student knows what is best for them, and therefore is their decision as to how they want to finish out the school year.