Most of my nights lately have ended the same way: sitting at my desk until past midnight, trying to finish an application or assignment before the due date. Somewhere along the way, there is typically some form of caffeine involved—most often Cherry Sundrop for me. At this point, it honestly feels like I am functioning purely off of caffeine.

And I know I’m not the only one. If you walk through the halls of the school and see a senior with a coffee cup and tired eyes, you are looking at someone trying to balance many different things: a possible full course load, scholarship applications, and college applications. On paper, it all looks manageable. In reality, it feels like running a marathon on three hours of sleep.

Senior year is supposed to be the best year of our lives, and don’t get me wrong, it is fun! After years of homework, tests, and projects, the finish line is finally in sight. But what is not made public about senior year is that the workload quadruples overnight. Between AP/dual enrollment classes, essays, applications, leadership roles, and deadlines that appear out of nowhere, it is beginning to feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day to finish everything. On top of that, there is a contagious condition that every senior seems to catch: senioritis.

Senioritis is a serious disease where motivation eventually ceases to exist between the start of school and graduation. The brain knows there are still responsibilities, but the heart seems to think it is on summer vacation already.

How do I manage it all? To be honest? Most days, I don’t know. My organizational strategy is a mix of sticky notes, a concerning amount of caffeine, and my trusty to-do list notebook. There are days when everything feels perfectly balanced, but there are also days when it feels like my mind is running a million miles per hour.

But there is also something strangely motivating about this phase of life. Each application represents a different possibility. Every scholarship essay that I have written has allowed me to reflect on how I have grown since the start of high school, from being a quiet freshman who wouldn’t say anything at all, to now a senior who can talk to anyone about anything. The leadership roles that once felt daunting now feel meaningful because they represent the community that I have built and will soon leave behind.

Senioritis may make motivation much harder to find, but it also represents how far we’ve come. Maybe that is what we are really supposed to learn in our senior year. Life isn’t about having things perfectly under control. It is about discovering you can learn to balance everything, even when life feels overwhelming.

So if you see a senior staring at their work, trying to decide whether to do it, just know we are doing our very best. We may look exhausted. We may complain incessantly about endless deadlines. And yes, we are most definitely fueled by caffeine.

But we are also learning how to become the next version of ourselves.