Oh my, so this is what everyone meant by “senioritis.” It’s hit me like a ton of bricks before I could even blink, all because of one missed assignment. Just like that, most of my motivation has been lost.

(It should be noted that it took a lot of self-convincing to write this article.)

I mean, why do homework when Fuller House is on Netflix, or you could binge watch every Try Guys video BuzzFeed has made? Your procrastination options are limitless!

Wait, I’ve just remembered why we can’t succumb to the sweet embrace of the internet and our beds: College. We aren’t out of the woods yet guys. Trust me, if I could fast forward time or make it so that our third quarter grades didn’t matter, I would. Sadly, science and I don’t have a great relationship and I don’t hold that kind of educational power. The best I can do for you is to give you a piece of advice that I’ve learned through ballet, and hopefully follow it myself.

When you start to get tired, work harder.

I’d first heard this a couple of years ago, when a guest teacher came and taught at our summer program. His classes were a lot of fun, but there would always be one combination during warm-up that would end with us holding a position (usually passe) for a full 60-90 seconds. This may not seem like a long time, but trust me, it is. Don’t believe me? Try it.

As our calves would start to seize up, our feet cramping and losing feeling in our thighs, he would see us start to sink down and say “No! Everyone here is tired, but when you get tired you need to work harder and stay up!” This mentality would follow all of us up until this very day, and will undoubtedly continue to follow us inside and outside of the ballet world.

Funnily enough, I’d never imagined that a ballet mentality and a piece of advice I’d gotten years ago would be so applicable to this situation.  But hey, I’ll take it.

It’s going to seem hard to just “keep working” even though we just want to take a nap. Heck, it WILL be hard! But not impossible. It will take willpower, and whining, and more willpower. We will need to give ourselves cheesy and cliche motivational quotes just to get us through each school week.

No matter what though, we will get through this alive and kicking, and we’ll get through this stronger. Remember, we’re going to be graduating soon, some of us going off to college, some of us staying here. Either way our lives will be significantly different from what they are now, and we need to enjoy these last few days of being “youths” in high school. Our teachers are well aware that it’s important for us to enjoy this last year of high school as much as we’re working hard to move on to college. It may seem like they don’t, and that this homework is useless and “I already have an A/B in this class, I don’t really need to do this assignment.” But I promise you, they’re trying (whether they’re trying to solely prepare you for the college workload or help keep your sanity intact depends on your class).

Enjoy this last tidbit of time left, and remember that when you start to get tired, work harder, because the end is well within our sight.