Isabelle Li ’25 comes home after a long day at school, her backpack thudding as she places it down and flops on the couch scrolling through college commitment posts. She knows she has homework and extracurricular work to finish—assignments she once tackled with urgency. Yet now, as her second semester of senior year drags on, motivation feels like a distant memory.
Li experiences this burnout as what is commonly known as “senioritis,” the slump that hits high school seniors as they near graduation. According to the National Library of Medicine, between 6.9 and 10.3 percent of 15-year-old students have experienced burnout, and by the age of 17 to 18, between 9.9 and 16.9 percent have experienced it. As Li waits for college decisions, she finds that this lack of motivation is the result of years of academic and extracurricular intensity catching up all at once.
“In sophomore and junior year, it was a lot easier to just go home, get my work done, or go to my extracurriculars and then get work done,” Li said. “But I feel like now, when I get home, I end up pushing it off until later in the night.”
Li recognizes her procrastination as a symptom of burnout. While she had felt an increased amount of stress during the first semester juggling classwork and college applications, it wasn’t until now that she could see the toll it had taken on her mental health. Rishi Vemuri ’25, too, said he felt burnout during the first semester, but his stress went beyond procrastination and physically impacted him as well.
“I was more drained every day when I was coming to school during the first semester,” Vemuri said. “I was getting sick, because I was getting so tired, and I wasn’t sleeping regularly.”
Vemuri found support by openly communicating with his teachers about his absences, who were understanding of his challenges and encouraged him to prioritize his well-being. With the second semester underway, he hopes to prioritize his physical and mental well-being while staying active in school.
“The way I view the second semester is to leave on a good note and just not have any loose ends when I’m going to college,” Vemuri said. “So I feel like my efforts are just geared towards fighting senioritis before it impacts me.”
Li, similar to Vemuri, is doing her best to stay motivated to combat burnout, but she still finds it inevitable, shaped by the school culture surrounding it. She believes the example set by previous upperclassmen plays a significant role in normalizing the mindset.
“After going through those four years and spending all that time and effort, you kind of want to relax a little bit for your last semester,” Li said. “A part of it is hearing about it from higher grades—last year, all my senior friends would talk about having senioritis but also about going out and having so much fun.”
Despite understanding the allure of senioritis, Li believes students shouldn’t entirely check out of school. Instead, she emphasizes the importance of open communication with teachers about students’ feelings to receive proper support.
“If students and teachers can communicate better on our expectations and feel more comfortable sharing how we’re doing, I think it would make students more willing to put in the work,” Li said.
Vemuri agrees with Li that communication with teachers is crucial, and wants teachers to be conscious of major college application deadlines like the early action or decision deadline on Nov. 1. He also stresses the importance of students being mindful of their limits when selecting classes.
“But no matter how aware teachers are, they can’t really do anything about students in tougher courses, who have to handle more strenuous coursework,” Vemuri said
English teacher Kimberly Musolf agrees with Vemuri, noting that students should be able to assess their own balance and recognize when stress or burnout is starting to take its toll. She emphasizes that part of being a human is going through cycles of motivation and burnout and it’s important to learn how to read one’s mental and physical cues.
“I do think that as you get to know yourself more, you can also be aware of maybe those warning signs within yourself or your actions,” Musolf said.
This proactive approach, Musolf believes, can help students manage their workload before it spirals into more serious mental or physical consequences. Shannon Lam ’26 explains the expectations she places on herself, often pushing herself as a student athlete to attempt to build a successful academic and athletic high school career. However, after struggling with burnout early in her high school journey, she has learned the importance of avoiding over-pushing herself
“Last year, I was super committed to track, and I would get no sleep during the second semester,” Lam said. “Now, after realizing how burnt out I was from last year, I’m going to try harder to focus on my education and being healthy because that matters more.”
Lam understands that listening to herself and noticing when to slow down can assist her in the future, whether that means high school or college. Vemuri and Li are both looking forward to cherishing the remaining months of high school by spending quality time with friends and family. From events like graduation to prom, they hope to make the most of these moments before heading off to college.
“I’m definitely going to try to spend a lot more time with my friends, especially since we’re all going to pretty different schools next year,” Li said. “I also want to spend more time with my family, because going away from home will be a big change, and I want to make the most of the time I have left.”