Near the end of the year, motivation for almost any student is at an all-time low. Once the month of May has arrived, snow cone shacks open, the weather gets hot, and it feels like it’s summer once again. Students yearn to participate in summer activities and count the days until school is out.

But for juniors, the stress seems particularly overwhelming. Many juniors are heavily involved in AP classes and other rigorous courses, which all have cumulative exams or AP exams during the month of May. This leaves juniors feeling both a lack of motivation to study and a significant amount of stress at the end of the year. Thus, students develop junioritis.

“Junioritis” is a play on the commonly used term “senioritis.” Senioritis is when seniors begin to no longer care or worry about school and their grades tend to drop. This is commonly because seniors have already applied to college and are no longer worried about their GPA. Junioritis is similar in that students have a lack of motivation and work ethic, but differs in the reasons behind this declining work ethic.

Junior year is typically classified as the hardest year of high school. It is often deemed most important on college applications and can be extremely stressful. Thus, after almost eight full months of working hard, students are exhausted and just can’t seem to do it anymore. Junioritis can be scarier than senioritis simply because juniors still have a full year ahead of them in which they need to continue to work hard. The seniors are typically expected to relax at the end of the year, but juniors are expected to begin college applications, tours, and various other things. This can seem overwhelming to students and they then develop junioritis.

There is no direct cure, but some say that talking a break can help increase motivation. The best way to stop, however, is simply for teachers to stop assigning work and relax a bit towards the end of the year. This will soothe both stressed out students and exhausted teachers.

If you’re struggling with junioritis, don’t worry. The year is almost over! But in the meantime, try to relax every now and then with Netflix, warm cookies, and long naps.