Editor’s Note: This article was written for Mosaic, an independent journalism training program for high school students who report and photograph stories under the guidance of professional journalists.

A common feeling is now rippling throughout the high school class of 2025. As exams, college acceptance decisions and next-steps in-life come together all at once, many high school seniors are suffering from senioritis.

Symptoms can include stress, burnout, exhaustion and an overall lack of motivation.

“It just feels like I have finished [high school] and I have nothing else to learn,” said Stephen Alcocer, a senior at Del Mar High School in San Jose. “I’m grown, I have a job, my own car, I do everything by myself.” As a result, he said, school is “not feeling important anymore.”

He said he now might skip classes when he knows he can do his schoolwork online. But he still makes sure he’s present for tests and maintains passing grades.

Adam Orenstein, a senior at Branham High School in San Jose, also confessed to a case of senioritis, but added it’s not necessarily bad.

“I’m the type of person to always get my work done on time, to never procrastinate and still turn in all my work,”  Orenstein said. But lately, he added, “I’m just feeling less motivation to be on top of every single assignment and every single studying session I have to do.”

Instead, he said he’s “prioritizing the more fun events that I want to do, like hang out with my friends, or stay at [tennis] practice extra long instead of going home and working on my homework, which I probably would have done in the first semester.”

He added that while he is “procrastinating a bit more and prioritizing my social life more than my academics, I’m still maintaining my academic success and everything. So I think it’s a good thing in my case.”

For some students, though, senioritis is more of an affliction.

“Everything is stacking up slowly. I guess it just makes me want to take a break,” Del Mar senior Ramma Hamdela said.

Hamdela, who carries a heavy academic load, said she is feeling especially burnt out this month because she has been fasting during Ramadan. “So after fasting for close to 13-14 hours, when I finally eat, it just knocks me out at like 7 p.m.”

Her grades have taken a hit, she said, “like from going from an A to a B.”

But overall, she said, she continues to plow forward. She said she feels obligated because she’s a first-generation, college-bound student. “My only family here is my mom, dad, my sister. … everyone else is back home [in Ethiopia]. So I’m like a bridge from here to there.”

“I literally have no option to stop or take a brain break… I just got to, like, full steam ahead, just keep on going,” she said.

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Danielle Schwartz, who teaches advanced history at Del Mar, said that she’s noticed some seniors actually have been “buckled in and gotten more focused.” But most, she added, “have lost some of their drive and their focus.”

That presents a challenge when leading a class, Schwartz said. “It takes extra time and extra effort to first take note of those students, grab their attention and bring them back in … and then to keep their attention afterwards.”

She did express sympathy for the seniors’ situation, and added it’s natural for a teacher to think, “Oh, I don’t want to add more to their plate.”

One student with a lot on his plate is Jose Soreque, a senior at Silver Creek High School in San Jose and a part-time trade school film student. He said senioritis affects him emotionally, “because sometimes I doubt that I’m being a good person, or I doubt that I’m trying my best. Sometimes if I have a really bad day… because I’m doing a lot of stuff, I think, am I not good enough?

“I realized that I have to be a lot of things to a lot of people,” he said. “I have to be a son, a brother, a boyfriend, a friend, a worker, an artist, a student. So I’ve just been trying to deal with all of that, on top of still trying to stay positive about it.”

Soreque offers insight to those afflicted with senioritis. “Just because someone isn’t trying their best moment or in a specific time, that doesn’t mean they’re not trying in something else,” he said. “Everyone tries something every day, and just because it isn’t something you see, it doesn’t mean it’s not happening.”

Sophia Urias is a senior at Del Mar High School in San Jose.