The Tortoise and the Hare

By Mattie Stinson, Stentorian Staff Writer

In all honesty (and I am somewhat ashamed to admit it to all of NCSSM), it is Wednesday night and I have been to a grand total of 3 classes this week (my physics classes, shout out Mrs. Stefan). To be fair, most of my Monday classes were cancelled due to the tornado warning, I was counseled out of my Tuesday classes, and Wednesday… I had extra sleep and a rewatch of season 6 of Grey’s Anatomy calling my name. 

I have been hearing about senioritis since my 8th grade teachers were warning me not to catch it, though I had always thought it was a mindset– something that could be avoided with discipline and a dedication to academic work. However, with the coming of my last high school semester, I was shown just how wrong I could be. 

Ella Juarez ‘26 agrees that senioritis has nothing to do with work ethic, and is rooted in awaiting upcoming change, saying “I think senioritis is entirely natural and something that comes with the end of an era. I think I felt a form of senioritis graduating kindergarten; like gosh, I am so old already.” 

Senioritis hits NCSSM hard. Especially with how hard working its students have been for their entire high school career, the second the light at the end of the tunnel is near, students lose the motivation to make it past the finish line. For the past three and a half years, we have been in a constant race against our peers, both at our homeschool and NCSSM. Now that it is almost over, most of us lose the desire to win and are just focused on making it to the finish line. Because why win when everyone finishes? And, at a school with no valedictorian or class rank, graduation becomes a participation trophy.

One senior articulates the loss of motivation, saying, “I think the senioritis is nothing out of the ordinary…honestly it’s like going to bed after a long day. You don’t really wanna do anything else, even if there is still work to do.” Another student agrees, “There’s always work to do, I’m just not going to do it.”

Everything feels so much harder, even though the actual workload I have is nothing compared to that of my three previous years of high school. The same assignment that would take me 1 hour to complete now takes me 3, with half of that time needed to convince myself to actually finish the assignment. I’m tired. 

This exhaustion is commonly felt by seniors. Micah Wascher ‘26 says, “Unfortunately, today I slept through 2 classes and 1 lab. Lucky for me, sleep is important and I finally got some. Can’t wait for the joys and perks of college, 30 extra minutes of sleep!” Another senior agrees, “Every morning I wake up and want to skip all of my classes and go back to bed. But honestly, yeah, I deserve to go back to bed. #soreadytograduate” 

We all know the story of The Tortoise and the Hare: how the Hare was so excited about the race that it ran too fast, got tired, and eventually lost to the Tortoise. NCSSM students are far too often the Hare; our ambitions, though leading us to incredible academic achievements, are the cause of our eventual burnout. We move too fast, we want to win too much, and, in the end, we just get too tired. 

Senioritis is all about weighing priorities. Which assignments to do first and which can we miss points on. Suddenly, the most math that I am doing is calculating which classes I can afford to miss and which are necessary to attend. Jasmine Herring ‘26 states, “senior year taught me a lot.. mostly how many classes I can skip without getting an absence notification from Gabrielle Norfleet. #10isthemax.”

As a school-affiliated newspaper, The Stentorian encourages NCSSM students to continue putting their full effort into every class and assignment. Though as a student and senior myself, I encourage seniors to put in as much effort as they can afford. Weigh those outcomes, maybe skip a class if you really need to. Don’t waste your life on school, but don’t waste away rotting in your rooms.