The school kindly grants students 10 excused full days off from school, redeemable without the presence of a doctor’s note.

If all 10 full days are used, students must provide the attendance office with a valid doctor’s note to excuse an absence from a supposed illness, even if the absence is for a simple sore throat.
But for seniors suffering from incurable senioritis, these precious days must be used wisely.

If students decide to cut class, or are marked with an unexcused absence, teachers are not obligated to provide students with extra time to complete the work assigned. In fact, teachers are not required to allow students to make up missed for unexcused absences.

If the absence is marked as a cut, students will receive the email notification of a detention they will have to make up. If not made up, they must miss those important senior events they were looking forward to all of high school.

But students do still have 10 days to maximize, and one of the best ways to do so is to create your own spring break.

The month of May features a lovely four-day weekend, with the Friday before the weekend being off for a staff day and the Monday after being Memorial Day. Now, four days off is very close to being a week off!

This is the perfect time to take a break because after a semester that is three weeks longer than fall semester and is full of busy work for those suffering from heavy senioritis, a May break is incredibly necessary.

So if students were to take one of their sacred sick days to take an extended break from school, well, it wouldn’t be a horrible idea.

This isn’t only applicable to creating your own spring break.

The district graciously provides other long weekends students can maximize. Some are connected to national holidays such as Labor Day, while others are part of staff work days. Students should extend these weekends even more to create their own breaks.

Even though students do not have to show up for half of November anyways, thanks to Veterans Day and Thanksgiving break, students can always choose to miss more than half of November, because who really likes November anyways?

Perhaps we can just get rid of November entirely.

Senioritis may not have arrived in early fall, but we have to account for the time when Oct. 31 rolls around and seniors have approximately 27 supplemental essays due on Nov. 1.
Yeah, claiming a sick day may be a good idea here, too.

We also must take a moment to acknowledge that full week in October when kindergartens through eighth graders are enjoying their minimum days during conference week. We high schoolers lost that joy when middle school thankfully ended, but for years we watched our little siblings come home early and bask in the comfort of their beds by midday.

But seniors have done their time and since they’re so busy recapturing their childhood anyways, they might as well use one of their sick days to get back their beloved conference week minimum day schedule.

And because we know many seniors are overcome with procrastination after finalizing their post-grad plans, it also would be advisable to save a sick day or two to study for big tests. This is particularly helpful if the test is in a class that students have been chronically absent from.

Failing a test and getting rescinded from the college you’re committed to wouldn’t be fantastic. But with the amount of seniors we see missing from class, failing a test really wouldn’t be unfathomable.

And don’t forget to allocate three days for the inevitable time when ditch day and the much-anticipated Disney trip comes around because students do not feel like attending three hours of detention.

These three days can also be used around Advanced Placement (AP) testing time, But make sure that one does not skip a class before or after their AP exam as that will count as a cut, unfortunately.

Another key rule to make note of is that after your 10 days are used up, you can still visit a college and get the absence excused. As long as a student can provide proof of the college visit, the absence will be excused. This doesn’t mean that students shouldn’t save one of their sick days for college tours, but it is also open to interpretation.

If students really want to be unethical, a sick day only counts if students are absent for the entire day, so that means students can skip class until 2:30 p.m., sign in to the office and get marked present for their last period, and then leave class after five minutes of attendance.

Students can show up late or sign out early. Because as long as they are marked present or tardy for at least one period, and have called in to excuse the tardiness (to avoid that pesky detention system), students will be able to conserve their beloved excused absences.

The only caveat is that students must get their neon green sign-out sheet signed by all their teachers, so they must make sure to actually pass all their classes.

Finally, make sure you leave two days for actual sickness in case the influenza virus hit you with a fever and vomiting.

While some of these ideas are unethical, using up all the sick days provided is like using all the paid time off people get from their jobs, and who wouldn’t use that, right?

Senioritis doesn’t hit everyone as hard, but who doesn’t mind a day off?