For some students looking forward to graduating in May, classes are the last thing they have on their minds.

Senioritis, according to the encyclopedia Wikipedia’s Web Site, is an imaginary syndrome associated with students finishing high school or college, or as senior sociology major Kaneisha Johnson described it, “the disease of being here too long.”

Johnson notes the effects of senioritis on students as making them jaded and bitter and adding to the difficulty of keeping up with everything.

“It makes it hard to get up in the morning,” Johnson said.

The symptoms of this “disease” are laziness, procrastination and apathy toward school work.

The legitimacy of this ailment is debatable, said sociology professor Jack King.

“I think it may be a mild form of stress,” King said. “After three and a half years you get to that last semester, you can see the end coming and all of a sudden you think ‘man, if I can only get through the next twelve weeks.’ Your GPA isn’t going to change that much one way or the other the last semester, [students] get antsy.”

King has suspected that some of his students have had senioritis, but has not had any student admit to it.

Senioritis is most noticeable in the spring.

“I see it at the end of the semester,” said marketing instructor Ed Brata. “I think people get depressed or down. It’s a shut down, but it shouldn’t be a long shut down, it can hurt you academically.”

The worst time to suffer from senioritis, according to Brata, is at the time of an exam or when doing group work.

King notices the lack of interest during finals.

“I see it more with exams, it looks like they’ve had enough,” he said.

Senioritis affects your grades negatively because the quality of the work suffers, said senior journalism major Gina Jones.

“[Senioritis] makes my grades worse, because all my work is half-a–ed,” Jones said. “You get so tired of being in school, you get lazy.”

Brata says time management is essential once students enter the work force.

“Your time is essential, you will have to deal with this in real life,” Brata said.

King admits he still catches a bit of it as well.

“Maybe it’s springitis for me,” he said.

For those students feeling overwhelmed, King said, “take spring break and don’t do any work. Use next week to recharge your batteries.”