Walking through the halls, sitting in class, looking at my twitter feed, I constantly hear the words “second semester senior” roll easily off the tongues of my classmates.

It seems that as soon as we can call ourselves that, second semester seniors, we are magically supposed to contract this horrible disease widely known as senioritis.

But here’s the deal: there is a difference between senioritis and lack of motivation. And there is a difference between the people that have senioritis and the people who think they have it.

I will use myself as a prime example. My whole high school career has been focused on my extracurriculars. Yes, grades are important, but I also think water polo, swim team, this newspaper, my club (CSAF), my job, the PTSA, and my volunteer work are also important.

Now that I too am a second semester senior, I don’t get to just give that up. I don’t just get to stop editing this paper that you are currently reading, I don’t get to just stop sending out the school wide emails your parents receive every week, I don’t just stop swimming, because I have made commitments to this school and myself. I cannot understand how someone could simply just give up everything they’ve ever worked to achieve just because they only have one semester left of high school.

However, that is me. That is how I feel.

I have friends who feel the same way about their schoolwork. Yes, second semester seniors are less motivated to do things. I personally will wait till the very last second to finish a project or I’ll do homework in my fifth period for my sixth period class. We have all become less motivated to do homework and more likely to put it off until the very last possible second, but those who truly cared about their grades and those who worked really hard to get where they wanted to be in school, find it hard to let that all go. They might not try as hard now that we are three months away from graduating, but it would be difficult for someone who has had a near perfect GPA for the past three and a half years to pretend like nothing matters anymore.

All in all, the people I am describing are the people who truly and realistically cannot have a complete case of senioritis. It’s actually impossible. Because these individuals have made commitments here and they are going to honor them.

The people who proclaim that they truly have senioritis are most likely the people who didn’t do anything in the first place . Everyone else has something that matters enough to them to not slip up too much, something that has made their time in high school worthwhile. Just because a person says they have a case of senioritis does not mean they will give up on life completely.