Senior skip day is a day cherished by seniors for generations, envied by underclassmen, and hated by teachers. It’s supposed to be a senior class tradition to celebrate leaving high school and moving on to better and brighter things.

Unfortunately, some seniors are now carelessly ruining the already tentative legitimacy of this day by proclaiming “senior skip day” any time during the year when they don’t feel like going to school.

Already this past fall, a “senior skip day” was proclaimed that left many classes half empty as many of the senior class stayed home and slept in. The day was chosen for no good reason other than to skip school. It embodied none of the tradition that senior skip day is supposed to involve.

I don’t have a problem with the concept of a single (well-deserved) day of break after 13 years of school, as long as it happens at the end of the year after AP testing when we really can see the light at the end of the tunnel that is graduation.

Having a senior skip day in the fall was ideologically pointless.

Many people, including myself, didn’t skip at all – not a single person was gone from my AP Biology class for skip day, both out of respect for our teacher and our unwillingness to miss any important class material.

And there wasn’t even a big planned activity – like the typical trip to an amusement park – that filled the hours seniors weren’t in school.

And despite already having one skip day this year, posts periodically appear on the Class of 2015 Facebook page trying to convince people to take yet another senior skip day, completely degrading the idea in the first place.

Skip day is supposed to be a celebration. Whether it’s a day at Wild Waves or in downtown Seattle or a trip to Coulon Beach in Renton, it’s supposed to be a day when seniors get together to spend time together before we scatter across the country, and we shouldn’t be worrying about missing classwork and falling behind.

It can’t just be something that happens every time a disgruntled senior can’t muster the energy to get out of bed for school, and wants to legitimize their laziness.

At another local high school, on senior skip day, everyone vacates their classes in favor of participating in a big celebratory activity that varies year to year. Then when they all get detention, Saturday school becomes yet another party. They’ve figured out how to preserve the tradition, and this is what we should be aiming for as well.

So stop trying to make “senior skip day” happen – for now. Wait until we all can really enjoy it in May or June and plan it well, and it will be the famed day of festivity that it was meant to be.