SENIORITIS by Julia Garcia

We start out three feet tall in elementary school. We gain a few feet in middle school, puberty leads us into high school. Before we know it, we’re putting on our caps and gowns at graduation.

It’s the end of the year; graduation is only months away, and all the seniors are in a rush to make sure they graduate on time. The last thought in anyone’s mind would be about the juniors and lower classmen. While the seniors get ready for life after high school, they get ready to move up the food chain in high school. But what if they’ve already contracted senioritis? Now it seems skipping has become the new trend.

Gabby Padilla, a sophomore at Heritage, started skipping when she was in the 7th grade at Frontier Middle School and still continues now.

“It’s easy to skip,” she says. “All I need is a person with a car and I can leave—it’s simple.”

Nancy Keller, the Anatomy and Environmental Science teacher here at Heritage spoke to Heritage’s past chemistry teacher, Gwendolyn Thompson, who moved to Union last year. “Everyone goes to school at Union, so the teachers have more to grade” Thompson commented.

Heritage has one of the lowest attendance rates in the Evergreen Public School District, and it looks like things aren’t going to get any better. Those who still have years to stay in high school already dread it. Not only is the districts reputation in trouble but also Washington State. Washington’s high school graduation rates have decreases to 76 percent which is below average, counting all the freshmen who graduated four years after entering high school.

The general concern is what’s going to become of those that succumb to Senioritis so early in their high school career. Too many kids every single year are denied the chance to walk across the stage the June of their graduating year with their peers. They’re denied their diploma—denied that chance to throw their caps in the air and celebrate their success. Something must be done so that we don’t enable our youth to go down a path that could lead to numerous consequences.

*Images by Cody Calhoon