The inevitable season has come again this year. Parents are desperate. Students are sluggish. Teachers are at their wits’ ends.

No, it’s not the flu season, or even allergy season.

It’s the end of the year slump.

Everybody knows about senioritis. As the weather gets warmer and seniors get closer to escaping high school, senioritis kicks in, and the effort seniors put into school decreases exponentially. What’s the point of attending class when you’re pretty much set for college?

But there’s senioritis that only seniors experience. Then there’s that general slump everybody experiences. Symptoms include: laziness, dead eyes, incomplete homework, numbness, lack of interest for anything related to school, slumped bodies, and tears.

If you see anybody with these symptoms, there’s no hope for them. Just pat them on the back and pray for them.

“I think I sold my soul to Satan during AP testing week,” junior Megan Weinshelbaum said. “I am past caring. So there’s nothing left of me.”

There seems to have been a lot of soul-selling this time of year. As tests, finals, and projects pile up, the light slowly fades from students’ eyes.

The Slump is most prominent as AP tests and finals wrap up in the months of April and May. Most AP classes do their finals during the time of the AP tests. AP classes then usually do nothing but the one, easy project, but it’s already too late. The Slump has infected them.

“My soul is not dying, but my body is,” sophomore Cookie Dinh said. “I just want to sleep.”

Even freshmen are experiencing The Slump. After all, it doesn’t discriminate.  Freshmen don’t realize they still have three more years of hell waiting for them, and that each year The Slump grows worse. By senior year, The Slump will go through metamorphosis and transform into senioritis.

Teachers and parents grow desperate at this time of year as they try to keep students motivated until the bitter end.

But honestly, they have to know it’s a hopeless cause.

“There is a palpable difference in energy,” AP Language teacher Sean King said. “I just think the testing after testing after testing is bad for the students. It’s horrible, too, because it’s the end of the year, and I want it to be good.”

The ideal way to end school is to work hard and finish with a bang because the last week of school usually counts for 15 to 20 percent  of students’ grades. But who does that?

The Slump never fails to appear every year. It’s a natural part of the high school cycle, just like how senioritis is universal. It will take over students and effectively battle teachers’ and parents’ wills.

So what do you do if you happen to have The Slump?

Nothing. You can’t beat it.