The class of 2026’s senior year is here, which means cheering at football games from the front of the student section, backpacks showcasing favorite childhood characters, themes, or animals, senior sunrise, senior sunset, and many, many more class-bonding traditions. 

Among these wholesome and fun traditions lies Senior Skip Day. 

The infamous day out of the school year where seniors collaborate and collectively skip school. 

Although the Senior Skip Day is confined to one day, is this phenomenon – seniors skipping school – more regular than an annual tradition?

Of course it is. It’s daily for most.

Being a senior means being offered a wide variety of classes to enroll in – or to not enroll in. As students enter their senior year, most of their required credits are secured. This opens up opportunities for late arrival and/or early dismissal, which most seniors utilize.

So, while most seniors don’t technically skip school every day, they work around skipping school by dropping classes to abbreviate their school days  – it’s practically a rite of passage.

And so is senioritis.

Everyone has heard of senioritis; it’s notorious because senior year burnout is real.

It is important to note that this burnout is not only a result of schoolwork.

Most seniors are balancing advanced levels of high school, some sort of work, various college applications, and scholarship applications to help manage the cost of college, and maybe even a sport (or three).

By winter break burnout isn’t a possibility – it’s almost inevitable. 

Senior Yaamini Aga states, “So far I don’t feel like I have senioritis because I’ve only been at school for like four days, but I think that with calc and everything, I will start feeling senioritis like really soon.”

Of course, there are always those who begin senior year with their motivation for school limited. 

“Like bro, I just don’t want to be at school,” complains Senior Eamon Murphy, who adds that he has “had senioritis since like halfway through sophomore year,” 

So kids, to all reading this who aren’t seniors, give your seniors some slack  – because even though we want to slack every day and stay home – we are trudging through, climbing the mountains and getting up every morning at an early hour (unless, of course, we have late arrival) and staying through until the end (well, not always the end of the school day, because, ya know, early release)