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It is March of 2008, the second half of our last year of high school, and people are passing something dangerous around the school. This hazardous item is neither drug, alcohol, nor is it answers to the final exams. It is the one, universal, and addictive combination of terms that everyone is guilty of using: students, teachers, parents, and administration alike. This treacherous evil is actually a phrase: second semester senior. This phrase commonly describes a student in their fourth year of high school, going through a time of laziness as college approaches and high school makes its way out of their lives. But few understand the true evilness of this term, and I am being serious.

The term is deadly. When it is uttered by a teacher, it usually means one or more students in their class show a lack of interest, and now the teacher associates this newfound laziness with being a “second semester senior”. Not only does this meaningless label make an excuse for the students’ actions, it pushes them even farther away than before from completing the work. I personally believe it slowly erodes the learning environment that school is supposed to flourish. Starting to see the damage this little phrase does?

Now teachers are not the only guilty culprits in this situation, students hold much of the blame as well. Since the term was invented, lazy students have used it as a scapegoat for their actions. Students have procrastinated since the inception of education and assignments. The phrase is just a new iteration of procrastination and this phrase actually makes the whole situation even worse. There was never a reason for procrastination other than that the student did not want to complete the assignment because it took effort. However students now craftily use the phrase “second semester senior”, to give procrastination a justification. Students have come to accept the term for this reason which takes away any effort they would inject into their daily educational activities, also preventing the students from acquiring any new knowledge before college.

At this point I am describing a place where neither the students nor teachers care about assignments not being completed. Teachers just easily give the student a failing grade for an assignment, and the students just as easily brush it off as a justified loss to their average. Do you now understand how this is truly scary? Some teachers actually have seen this frightening event coming, and they are actively trying to make education more interesting to their students with assignments other than papers and “busywork”. They are incorporating new lessons which involve the student working creatively in the learning process. This teaching method keeps students interested in the subject and makes them put forth effort into the work at the same time. This ingenious lesson plan has helped to convert some followers, and keep soon-to-be-victims from falling prey to the venomous phenomenon.

Isn’t this environment, in which teachers push out new ways to educate students while the students are actively interested and participating in those lessons, the environment that should have grown since the start of 9th grade? I am not sure I can answer that question for you because in reality, I am only a second semester senior.

By Andrew Olanoff