Its blank Slenderman-like face haunts me. The stalkers somehow found my email, urging me to start it. The horror of the yet-to-be-written college application essay and the hours wasted staring at a blank, white document mark a grave start to my senior year.

“Explore our majors … start YOUR dream here.”

About 80 percent of my email is brandished with the subject line of “____ college admissions” or “Dear Sumin.” Many high school seniors along with me will have to make the ultimate decision of where they will spend their next four years. The reality of having to complete college applications, scholarship requests, and senior year coursework competes with our exhaustion and interest in other things. The result? Senioritis.

Senioritis has been diagnosed to show symptoms around January, by which most seniors would have sent in their final college applications. The disease emerges as fully fledged around mid-April or the end of the fifth marking period. Once grades lock and the sixth marking period begins, seniors are known to succumb to their disease, resulting in lack of focus in class, inability to complete assignments, and a stress-free happiness. However, for my peers as well as I, senioritis has come too quickly.

“Every ounce of sleep I didn’t get in junior year, I’m getting now,” senior Ivy Lee said. “All I do is eat and sleep.”

For three years, numerous students have sacrificed hours of their own time for the sake of completing classwork. Now, some consider senior year as a long-deserved respite.

“I don’t care about grades anymore,” senior Sarah Choi said. “I just want to watch Netflix.”

The looming need to finish college applications has not quite hit seniors yet. It is only a matter of months before the deadlines of some universities, and the relaxed feeling may engender into stress as some seniors scramble to finish their essays.

“I’m tired of [high] school,” senior Shannen Phan said. “I can’t wait to go to college.”