The Ethics of Senioritis

Each year as the light and freedom of graduation approaches, seniors in both
high school and college have a choice to make. Some choose to stay steady and
finish their course work with energy and enthusiasm, while others choose to slow
down and burn out. This burn out goes by many names but is commonly labeled
senioritis and is characterized by a lack of motivation, and respect towards course
work, teachers and even other students. The core of the situation, as I see it, lies
deeper than simply choosing to burn out or not. I would argue that senioritis is a
result of self-deception and is morally wrong under all of the major ethical
viewpoints including utilitarianism.
Before we can analyze the morality of senioritis it would be beneficial to
outline some of the causes or influencers attributed to cases of senioritis. In a study
of college students at a mid-sized New England college performed by Stephanie
Cushman and Richard West, an open ended survey classified many contributors to
burnout related stress. (Cushman et al. 25) They can be categorized into intrinsic,
meaning related to the persons self and over which they have control, and extrinsic
contributors, where the student does not have explicit control, such as outside
familial influences and circumstances, personal injuries or health, and work
requirements to provide means for living. While each of the extrinsic influences are
valid contributors, for the sake of this paper they will not be included in the analysis.
However, the intrinsic contributors including instructor attitude and behavior,
assignment overload and lack of personal motivation will be included in the
foundation of the analysis.
First lets consider the influence of a teachers attitude and behavior on
student burnout. At first glance it should seem that this contributor should be in the
extrinsic category. I would agree that the teacher ultimately has a responsibility for

their own actions, but the student also have a responsibility to correctly interpret
the teachers attitude and behaviors. It is in this light of the students responsibility
that I want to focus. Deontologists would say that the student has a duty to learn
regardless of situation or teacher. The student has a right to a good teacher, but
under the contract of the institution they forfeited their right to fully choose the
teacher and must claim responsibility for the duty to learn from the one supplied. As
such, any choice to burn out goes against duty. The utilitarian thought would argue
that the greatest good could be accomplished by the symbiotic relationship of the
best teacher and the best students, or the ones they could best help. Within the
limitations of the institution and the teacher supplied, the greatest good would be
for the student to choose to learn as much as possible. Virtue ethics would also fall
very close to this line of thinking stating that finding a way to learn despite the less
than ideal circumstances provided by a less than idea l teacher would show a path
of higher moral character and as such should be pursued. Deliberately acting in a
manner leading towards a burn out because of a teachers attitude or behavior goes
against all three views.
Another influence reported is assignment and coursework overload. This
influencer falls in the intrinsic category for the same reasons as the previous
influencer. The argument is also very much the same for the deontological point of
view. Each student has a duty or responsibility to perform the required work and
should only take the number of courses they feel they can handle. The college
should carefully monitor the level of expected out of class work according to their
policy and require teachers to follow it. But again, the students cannot use
excessive work load as an excuse to burn out because it violates a duty they
committed to. The utilitarian point of view can be split between short term and long
term approaches. In the short term, doing homework might not prove to be the

greatest good when compared to sleep, a social event, or relationship, but in the
long run the greatest good will come from diligent effort to complete coursework.
This is because it promotes confident and capable graduates. In this case the long
term benefit has more weight and should be followed. Virtue ethics would recognize
that both the character of the student and the institution should be upheld and that
both parties have a responsibility to uphold both sides. This means that the college
has a responsibility to help itself and the students and likewise for the students.
Applying this to the coursework scenario, large course loads should be prevented
and discouraged by the institution and the student should take responsibility to
prioritize and maintain open communication with the professors to try to mitigate
scheduling crunches. If the college has in place methods to prevent excessive and
taxing loads, then the student should not rightfully use this as an excuse or reason
to become burnt out.
The last influencer I want to discuss from Cushman and West is the lack of
personal motivation. I think this is the catchall of influencers that promote burn outs
in students. However I feel that it is more of a descriptor of students who burn out
rather than the actual cause for why they do. I say this because most cases of burn
out lead to a lack of motivation because of some other supposed reason be it a
professors attitude, or excessive homework, or a loss of interest in the course work
or degree. I say supposed reason because each reason falls as an excuse where
the student tries to shift the blame to someone or something else while removing
their personal accountability. These are two of the greatest markers and identifiers
of self-deception according to Terry Warner author of Bonds That Make Us Free
Healing Our Relationships, Coming to Ourselves. Self-deception can be classified as
a form of lying and if left uncorrected long enough can lead to moral blindness
usually exhibited in the form of apathy and personal distancing both of which are

descriptors of burn out. In this light, excessive senioritis is actually the

consequences that follow acts of self- deception on the students part. This means
that using the excuse of lack of motivation is a not valid under any ethical view
point. The utilitarianism view does not give room for lying because it detracts from
the overall good. This is especially true looking at the personal level and will be
discussed later. Deontologists, recognize some forms of lying as necessary, but only
in extreme situations and never in satiations where the lying party in is in a position
to get gain. Virtue ethics require a strong personal moral character. If allowed, selfdeception could potentially undermine and subvert all that virtue ethics stands for
because anything could be rationalized as being virtuous through means of selfdeception.
If senioritis really is the result of self-deception and lying then it is potentially
more detrimental than just skipping a little course work at the end of the semester.
In a stress study on randomly selected engineer, nursing, and medical students by
Shashanke Behere and associates, they identified that at least 10-15% of students
are in a state of denial towards their existing stresses. Stress and pressures are a
necessary part of our lives, but the self-defeating attitude of turning a blind eye
toward existing problems is a harbinger of serious mental and psychological
problems. (Behere et al. 3) Senioritis if left unchecked has the potential to cause
problems in every aspect of an individuals life beyond just college. This is because
self-deception distorts the way the world appears and an individual reacts. Usually
situations tend to snow ball and build on themselves to the point it becomes easy to
rationalize a way out of anything. This would affect an individuals performance in
jobs, personal and family relationships, and other stress inducing environments.
So if senioritis is self-deception and is ethically wrong under the lens of
so many ethical viewpoints, how can it be prevented? One question needing to be

asked is who is responsible to for the preventing. The highest moral view would
place the responsibility solely on the student with the hopes that the virtue of the
responsibilities and duties the students are bound to as well as the future
opportunities available would be the motivation required to not burn out at the
end .This approach has been the standard for the last century and senioritis has
become so prevalent that it is almost the expected culture and shows that this
model does not work all that well. This is again due to the nature of students selfdeception. So how can the plague be thwarted? Some ideas might include having
caring professors, student minded institutions, an open environment for
development and growth in classrooms, and one on one interaction with a capable
mentors. A close inspection would yield the thought that these are simply the
corrected form of the influencers that students gave for burning out, and you would
be correct. While senioritis might look on the outside as an unethical and superficial
expression of laziness and apathy, perhaps it is really the cry of a student reaching
out for personal fulfillment and validation beyond their own capabilities and
understanding. Perhaps both parties should listen a little more carefully.

Works Cited
Cushman, Stephanie, and Richard West. "Precursors to college student burnout:
Developing a typology of understanding." Qualitative Research Reports in
Communication 7.1 (2006): 23-31.
Warner, C. Terry. Bonds That Make Us Free Healing Our Relationships, Coming to
Ourselves. Boston: Deseret Book, 2001. Print.
Behere, Shashank P., Richa Yadav, and Prakash B. Behere. "A comparative study of
stress among students of medicine, engineering, and nursing." Indian journal of
psychological medicine 33.2 (2011): 145.

Works Consulted
Farber, Barry A. "Dysfunctional aspects of the psychotherapeutic role." Stress and
burnout in the human service professions 117 (1983): 97.