Last year, I wrote a letter addressing my class as juniors. In that letter, I expressed hope and optimism toward senior year, as many of my peers did.  This year, however, there is a palpable change in attitude among us.

I, along with many others, have never struggled more than I have this year, and it’s all because of one simple factor: motivation. Many of us have already been accepted to college or are just waiting to hear back, making school seem pretty pointless and assignments all the more tedious.

Why even bother when it doesn’t really matter, right?

Then again, why drop the ball when we’re so close to the end? If high school were a mile, we’d already be a good distance into the final lap. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen any runner give up so close to the finish line.

If that doesn’t motivate you, let me share some cold, hard facts about the nasty effects of “senioritis”: colleges can, in fact, revoke an acceptance.

Admission letters almost always include a clause stating that a student’s acceptance is contingent on continued academic success (i.e. passing all of your courses and remaining in the ones you reported to the college as your senior year schedule, not dropping them for an easier course load). If a student’s grades drop significantly below the grades on his or her transcript reported from the past three years, or if a student engages in more serious misconduct like cheating or being arrested, a college can easily release a student’s spot in the freshman class to someone on the wait list.

As soon as I read up on that, I decided that slacking my senior year wasn’t worth it. Collectively, we have all put some of our hardest work into these past few years, and it just wouldn’t make sense to abandon success so close to the end.

The numbers work out like this: according to the daily announcements, Friday, November 18, is already day 60 of the year. Technically, we have 180 days in one full school year (although the numbers vary, especially due inclement weather and the abbreviated end of the school year for graduation). That means we’re already a third of the way through senior year.

We’ll be wearing caps and gowns and receiving diplomas before we know it. Seniors, even if we have to drag ourselves to the finish line, let’s try our best to end this year strong. A coach once told me something along the lines of this: “Nothing brings people together like mutual suffering.”