As I reach the end of my final year of high school, I am finding myself saying, “I just want to be done” — a lot.

Senior year has seemed to drag on endlessly; I am so ready to be done for good.

Being so close, but not wanting to continue putting in the hard work and effort that I have been putting in since freshman year, can make it hard to stay motivated to do anything at all.

I mean, even writing this story was a pain because I had to force some motivation inside myself to start typing.

Lack of motivation can lead to bad grades and bad study habits. Once you realize you can scrape by with doing the bare minimum, it will seem more desirable when time is most valuable.

You will start procrastinating and doing minimal work more often just to maintain a grade. Because why try when you could not try and get a good enough grade? You already got into the college you want to go to, so what’s the point?

It’s too easy to give up.

But the last thing you want is to give up too much too soon and fail your last marking period and not graduate because hanging out with friends sounded like more fun than reading that book for English. You can just use SparkNotes for it later, right?

Yeah, that doesn’t always work. Don’t do that.

Most seniors have jobs — this is an excuse to not do homework.

Teacher: “Why didn’t you finish that packet for homework last night?”

Senior: “Oh — I’m so sorry. I forgot about that. I worked until 10:30 last night, and crashed as soon as I got home.”

Convenient, but after the 10th time it starts to get pretty old and predictable.

Stop doing that.

Actually attending school can be a struggle for many seniors.

Let’s not even talk about showing up on time to anything.

But don’t get too used to it because you don’t want to miss too many days. Having to take those exams to determine if you graduate or not won’t be fun.

Don’t do that.

All jokes aside, being a senior is great and exciting. We have so many great things to look forward to.

As a whole, we will get through these last couple of weeks together.

So try your best to stay motivated and finish the year strong.