Senior year. It’s the culmination of all thirteen years of public schooling we’ve been forced through. It’s a year for relaxing before heading out into new communities and the real world. And where would we be without this year of preparation before we depart into the big bad world?

Deleting senior year only rushes children out of the home and out on their own. Frankly, I know very few teenagers who, after junior year, are mature enough to go off to college on their own.

It’s like a kitten being pulled away from its mother too soon. It can’t fend for itself. It can’t even feed itself. It hasn’t properly adapted to the world yet and it can’t handle the This is comparable to sending out children fresh off their junior year. They’re young and still too immature for this. They’re barely old enough to work and not be violating child labor laws. In college or in the wild, they would have to support themselves with much less help from Mommy and Daddy, and many children just aren’t prepared for such responsibilities.

I personally want my year of relaxation. It’s a year to decide what I want: where I want to go to college, what I want to study in college, what I want for the rest of my life. Senior year allows for young adults to really formulate where they’re going in life.

It’s also the culmination of all the fun of high school. Students get to do all the stuff they’ve been waiting for since they were in eighth grade and drooled over the idea of high school. There’s prom, All Night Grad Party, getting out of taking the PSAT, leaving school three minutes early, and finally, graduation. I understand that in theory all of these fun activities would be available to the juniors should there be no senior year, but waiting another year for the excitement makes it all the sweeter once you finally make it to the end.

Senior year is the light at the end of the tunnel. You still have to finish driving through the tunnel and getting ready to be out from under the shelter of the tunnel, but you can see the end.

All getting rid of senior year does is push all of the stress and necessities­—taking a thousand standardized placement tests, applying to college, applying for scholarships, the works—back to junior year. It’ll make junior year, rather than senior year, the joke year. It will create mass laziness and unparalleled indifference. Thus, the creation of “junioritis.”