It’s the end of the year when that lackadaisical attitude is evident in almost every class.

Students miss school because they were enjoying the light cracking through their window as they snoozed and when they woke it was already 9:25 a.m.

There isn’t any point in going, especially since they’re already late and there’s only a month left.
Junior Eric Andrade describes it as spring fever. “The end is so near I just give up on school,” he said.

“It is the spring season,” Chan Sam, the head counselor, said. “It’s the hot weather, the feeling that school is about to be over.” When it’s cold, he said, they try to come to school and tend to maintain grades. “They try to band together, stay warm.”

The warm weather doesn’t stop some.

“I work until the end because I want to finish the school year out on a positive note,” Nathan Keosomphanh said. The freshman keeps his work habit high as he keeps sports scouts and even college recruiters in mind.
This makes perfect sense, according to Sam. “Underclassmen are actually doing better,” he said. “It’s the first semester that trips them up.”

“You never know who’s watching you,” Keosomphanh said. “That summer vibe starts to kick in,” he said, but he doesn’t want scouts to lose interest in him because of bad grades.

History teacher Tara Hayes shared a story about one of her students a few years ago. “He got into CSU San Francisco and got a D his second semester of senior year,” she said. “He was told he no longer qualified for college and couldn’t go.”

Truancy, according to Sam, is crucial.

“Attendance impacts grades,” he said. He even gets extra bus passes from the district, “for those who really need it” to reduce absences due to lack of transportation.

Even teachers begin to feel the warm air and want to snooze. “By the end of the year,” Spanish teacher Raquel Chavez said, “I am exhausted.”

She sympathizes with students and even progressively adds “little breaks” between activities for breathers.
An exception to those who get caught in the spring time sweep of relaxation and lack of motivation for school wouldbe junior Jamela Anderson, who will try anything to push herself even if it’s a summer class. “I’d do it for the benefits and because my heart would tell me to.”

“Some students will say ‘Oh, I’m going to change,’” Hayes said. “Change is a process.” History teacher Roger Esparza always tells his students it takes six week to break a habit. What happens when there aren’t six weeks left?

With graduation inching closer, it is a motivation for some.

Take senior David Coffield, for example. He said his first two years of high school were different times for him.
“I picked myself up junior year,” he said. Senior year is coming to a close and he said he would be less motivated knowing graduation was not within arm’s reach.

A junior who is consistently two questions shy of passing the CAHSEE says, “I would be more motivated knowing I would be graduating next year.”

Junior Armani Smalls said as the year rolls on, the workload should lessen considering the third and fourth quarters are the designated “testing season.”

“Some students just get burned out,” Hayes said. “You wouldn’t run a marathon and give up at the last second, right?”