Seniors Sit in Classes but Spirits Have Flown

“I’m not one of the more drastic cases,” said Heather Spencer of the senioritis that is epidemic in her class at San Marino High School.

But Heather, who is secretary of the student body, finds herself behaving in ways she never did before as she and her classmates count the days until their June 19 graduation.

Last week, she had a chemistry test. Did she study for it the night before? She did not. Instead, she recalled, “I went to bed. I studied for it during lunch before the test.”

Heather, who will be going to Brigham Young University in Utah in the fall, is not the sort of student who normally waits until the last moment and crams for tests. But like most of the 270 members of San Marino’s Class of 1987--indeed, like high school seniors everywhere--she keeps forgetting why she should concentrate on chemistry and English composition.

Something is ending forever, something exciting is about to begin, and that seems more important than perfect attendance or spot quizzes or even term papers, all matters that formerly loomed large.

“Everybody has it,” Tim Hall, a senior at Palos Verdes High School in Palos Verdes Estates, said of senioritis. “Everybody says, ‘Don’t study. I’m not going to study. Let’s go to a movie.’ ”

Wednesdays are the worst at Palos Verdes: Admission to a nearby movie theater is only $2. And even when there is no film to tempt the eminently temptable seniors away from their studies, there are pickup games of baseball and basketball. The girls, Tim said, are lured by soap operas. At San Marino, Heather said, seniors would rather sleep than study.

While the term senioritis does not appear in textbooks, psychologists contacted by The Times described it as a normal but often anxiety-ridden stage that teen-agers pass through on their way to adult autonomy.

Senioritis is rarely fatal. But, as one Southland school official pointed out, it is highly contagious: “It’s as bad as seasickness,” he said. And it is an annual trial for teachers and school administrators who find that their once diligent, even driven, students are suddenly as distractable as 3-year-olds.

Jim Kinney, director of student activities at Palos Verdes, said the condition is as predictable as graduation. “It starts the same time every year--the moment the colleges send their acceptances out in mid-April,” he said. “You can almost set your watch by it. Then the weather gets nice. It’s a deadly combination.”

Asked to describe the syndrome, Kinney said: “It’s like cruise control in a car. The kids put themselves on automatic pilot.”

Liz Beckenbach, who graduated last week from Marlborough School in Hancock Park, remembers what she was like before she came down with senioritis.

“I was such a geek,” she said. “I turned everything in on time. I never ditched.”

‘Happened Overnight’

On Dec. 13, she found out she had been accepted at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, the college of her choice, and a new Liz emerged.

“It happened overnight. Once I found out I was accepted, I came in the next day out of uniform!”

The old Liz would no more have come to school out of uniform than with a frog in her pocket. But that was before senioritis struck.

“Let’s face it,” said Lu B. Wenneker, college counselor at the private girls’ school. “Once they’ve got their college applications out of the way, it’s treading water. Most schools spend a great deal of time finding things to keep seniors interested and in school.”

Early Graduation

Senioritis was so widespread at Marlborough this year that the administration decided to hold graduation early, on May 20, instead of in June, as in the past.

The school’s 70 seniors reported varied symptoms. Dena Crowder of Ladera Heights found herself going home at 10 in the morning more and more often (permitted by the school, if the senior’s classes are over and her parents approve).

Many seniors said they cut class only to reconvene at Gelati Per Tutti, a popular ice cream parlor on Melrose Avenue.

Apathy was endemic among second-semester seniors. As Kathy Durousseau put it: “It just doesn’t matter.”

Sara Golding, who lives in Los Feliz, was more specific. “Colleges will never see our second-semester grades,” said Sara, who has been accepted at Yale.

That’s not strictly true, according to Wenneker. Colleges occasionally rescind their acceptances of students who perform abominably during the second semester of their senior year, but not often.

At San Marino, school officials try to keep seniors in line by telling them the cautionary tale of a recent graduate whose acceptance to a prestigious university was almost rescinded when her second-semester senior grades plummeted, said Charles Johnson, assistant principal for instruction. The high school received a copy of a letter sent to the student in which the university expressed doubts about her ability to meet its standards of performance. She cleaned up her act and did well at the university, Johnson said.

Students’ Friendships

While studies meant little to the Marlborough seniors, friends meant everything. Seniors said they felt close even to classmates they had not really gotten to know and will probably never see again after graduation.

“There is nothing left but friendship,” Kathy said.

“I hate the school more than I ever did, but I love the people,” another senior observed.

The intense feeling of sisterhood among the Marlborough seniors came as a surprise to some. It is an extremely competitive institution, where most students are aware that they are scrambling for a handful of places at Ivy League and other highly selective colleges and universities.

‘Care About Each Other’

But as Lori Matloff said: “The competition between us is gone, and we care about each other. I couldn’t be happier about some of the things that have happened to people if they had happened to me.”

Ambivalence was another common characteristic of seniors. As Lori noted: “You’re torn because you want to get out of school, but your friends are here.”

This feeling of being divided is common among seniors, according to psychologists.

Herbert J. Freudenberger, a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst who treats many adolescents in New York City, describes the senior year of high school as a time fraught with anxiety, not unlike that faced by people on the verge of retirement.

“Sometimes kids begin using more dope and alcohol as a way of not facing the anxieties and stresses and pressures they’re going to face by going out in the world,” Freudenberger said.

In Freudenberger’s view, a major concern for seniors is that their world will no longer be highly structured.

Less Structure

Once you are out of school, he noted, “the year doesn’t start in September; it starts in January.” Suddenly, he said, “seniors have too much space, too little to do, too much ambiguity.”

Moreover, once students graduate from high school, he said, they suddenly feel that they are responsible, rightly or wrongly, for what happens to them.

“They can’t blame other people anymore,” he said. “Now it’s them.”

Martin E. Ford, a developmental psychologist on the faculty of the Stanford University School of Education, is not sure whether senioritis is a genuine psychological phenomenon or a cultural tradition.

To some extent, Ford said, senioritis occurs “because adults expect it and tolerate it and legitimize it.”

At the same time, he said, “it certainly makes sense that people would reinvest their attention and energy and activity into alternate goals or pursuits that are now more relevant to them.”

Saddle-Shoe Sentiment

In other words, it makes sense that seniors would start weaning themselves from an institution--high school--that will soon be closed to them.

As counselor Wenneker said: “There’s a certain fashionable antipathy toward the school in the senior year. But in the spring, when the reality of leaving hits them, there are tremendous tears. And the ones who are the most vocal about wanting to get out of here are the ones who weep the loudest at graduation.”

Hilarye Johnson became sentimental about saddle shoes.

Saddle shoes are de rigueur at Marlborough but no student with a rudimentary sense of fashion would ever wear clean, new saddle shoes to school.

Sometime in the spring Hilarye realized that she will never again feel obliged to muss up a new pair of saddle shoes by running over them in her car or chicly griming them up by wetting them down and rubbing them with a newspaper.

Lori suddenly realized that she had just one more assignment to complete before high school was over forever: going to the beach.

“We’ve got to get our backs tanned because our graduation dresses are low in the back,” she explained.

The past is dying.

Long live the future.

“I feel so sorry for the faculty,” Lori said. “They’re going to be here next year.”