Across an academic year, grades one through eleven know where they are going the next year: the next grade. Seniors, meanwhile, have a whole different opportunity: deciding what to do the next year, after PCM High School. This can cause stress as well as senioritis once the decision is made. Senioritis is the term used to describe seniors who don’t care about school as much, causing their grades to worsen close to graduation. But PCM has many resources, including guidance counselor Cormick Michael and College and Career Transition Counselor Morgan Donovan.    

Donovan provided more information as to what her role is in the lives of juniors and seniors at different schools where she works. 

“I’m just a supportive person to help kids navigate as far as their ideas and what they want to do go,” Donovan explained. “So I just help further their ideas and see how they can happen. If they have no idea what they want to do, I help them to find a direction.”

Seniors are at a pivotal point in their lives. Never again will so many people ask them what they are doing next year or what they want out of life. It is just an open road with a fog over it, making it hard to see. It is part of the stress that is still there even after the decision is made.  

“A lot of it plays into how early seniors start thinking about their future,” Donovan explained. “They could be thinking early or waiting until the last minute and becoming overwhelmed with all the pressure to make a decision on their future.”

Another big part of the decision making process is knowing who exactly you will be around next year. All the seniors have grown up together and become accustomed to seeing each other, but it will come to an end. 

Ẅith friends you want to keep in touch with, you have to check in,”Donovan explained. Hat does’nt mean daily, but don’t forget about them. You might see them especially with social media, but you don’t really see all of them on social media.”

In a survey sent to seniors in the first semester, twenty seniors said they were going to college.  It was skewed data because only seniors going to college answered and some were still undecided. In 2021, the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that about 60 percent of high school seniors nationwide go to college and the numbers have been lingering around there for years. The good news is that there are other options such as a trade school, an apprenticeship or entering the workforce. With PCM’s seniors, some of them are undecided. 

“My goal is to have very little, if any, of the seniors in the completely undecided category by the end of the school year,” Donovan said.