DATE: Friday, October 24, 1997              TAG: 9710240062

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E13  EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JENNIFER VONUSA, HIGH SCHOOL CORRESPONDENT 

                                            LENGTH:   49 lines

SENIORS THINK LAST YEAR SHOULD BE LITTLE WORK

ALL RIGHT, it's your senior year and you're probably thinking, it's party time! Many seniors are beginning to experience the first stages of a common ailment: senioritis. This illness clouds your vision of what your senior year actually will include.

``Seniors think they're above everyone else, and they think that it's their last year so they can slack off on going to school and doing their work,'' said Matt Biehl, a senior at Salem High School in Virginia Beach. ``In fact, colleges are still looking to see that you're maintaining good grades.''

Steve Eib, a guidance counselor at Kellam High School in Virginia Beach, said the main thing he sees in seniors is that they drop some of the more challenging classes.

``They start off pre-registering for classes at the end of their junior year,'' he said. ``Then they receive their schedules and come in on the first day of school and want to get transferred out of the harder classes because they don't want to do the work.''

You're probably thinking that you've come this far, why not do just some of the homework instead of all of it, or just get by with as little research as possible to get a half way decent grade on that paper.

``Slacking off becomes a bad habit,'' said Eib. ``You lose all those good study habits you've acquired throughout the years.''

Despite their desire to take it easy during the last year of high school, many seniors realize there's plenty of work to be done.

``I'm taking three AP classes, so I have no time to slack off,'' said Jenna Evans, a Cox senior. ``It's actually making me strive harder to get into the college that I want to go to.''

That next step is a big one for many seniors. Sure, they want independence, but the thought of freedom can be scary.

``Most seniors are going to college next year, and they're afraid of new experiences,'' said Kathy Sessoms, a senior at Nansemond River High School in Suffolk. ``They're scared of being at the bottom of the `food chain' again like they were when they were freshmen in high school. I think school gets harder the further you go up; ninth grade was a breeze compared to twelfth grade so far.''

Counselor Eib said his own experience taught him how important the last year of school can be.

``The problem with me was that when I went to college, I had no clue how to study,'' he said. ``I studied about four times longer my freshmen year than my junior year, because I learned how to study. By the time my junior year came around, I didn't have to pull those all-nighters studying for tests or exams.

``Everything you do today enables what you might do tomorrow.''

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