Once you are in the high school environment, you start hearing the term “senior slide” thrown around quite frequently. This term references the tendency of seniors to stop doing as much school work after the first quarter, or semester, of the year and attending classes less than usual. Leading up to a senior year, it is easy to assume that the reason for the slide is due to burnout and being preoccupied with senior year activities, however, the habit of senior sliding has many contributors that come to light more clearly once you are a senior yourself.
The most common pipeline for seniors to start slacking off is that they apply early for colleges, and then get accepted to school during the winter. Once they know they’ve gotten into college, they feel like schoolwork is fruitless since they’ve already established the plan for their future. It’s an understandable reason to feel unmotivated, but I think there are more aspects of high school that make the environment nearly unbearable.
I think that the real root of the senior slide is more about feeling suffocated by the rules and treatment you face as a high school student while simultaneously feeling pressure to fulfill adult responsibilities outside of school.
For starters, most students get their driver’s license during their junior year of high school. Every new driver gets the whole “with great power, comes great responsibility” speech, and it really does ring true. Having a license brings a significant amount of freedom, as well as a load of responsibility. Anyone with a license has to be responsible for driving safely, and for many, getting to their obligations on time is no longer a parent’s job. It is on them to be organized with their time as well as thoughtful and careful on the road. In addition to being licensed, many juniors and seniors have jobs. Working adds another layer of responsibility to students’ lives. They have to be good at time management, work hard, and be mindful about how they use their money. Lastly, most people turn 18 at some point during their senior year. Once you’re 18, you are presented with even more freedoms and responsibilities. From taxes to voting to tattoos, being a legal adult feels like starting a new chapter of your life.
Considering all of this, many seniors have had to start growing into adulthood and, outside of school, are no longer treated like children. They are spending hours of their time and energy to be productive, self-sufficient, and mature in all of these contexts where they are treated the same as the adults that surround them. Then, they walk into school and get reprimanded for using the bathroom without permission or forgetting to put their phone in a pouch. Because of this, I think one of the largest contributors to the senior slide is the aggravation that comes with being given the same treatment as the fourteen-year-old freshman despite the huge discrepancies in maturity. This treatment makes school work feel like more of a burden and makes many seniors want to avoid it as much as possible. If seniors were given more freedoms, respect, or privileges than younger grades, it might make them less anticipatory to escape high school by not doing work or simply not showing up.
To conclude, senior sliding has many contributing factors. However, I think many adults don’t acknowledge the psychological reasons for wanting to avoid the high school environment and work that comes with it. No 18-year-old who has to worry about adult responsibilities and obligations wants to be told that they can’t eat lunch where they want, go to the bathroom without a pass, or put headphones in while they’re working. And since many have gotten into college by winter time, and many are able to dismiss themselves from school, it seems pointless to stay for seven hours in such a restrictive environment when the second they leave the school property, they have adult-like freedom to do whatever they want. I think it is important for teachers and parents to recognize that this struggle and reluctance to attend school or do school work doesn’t always come from laziness, and many feel discouraged by unfair treatment.
