[qqwref]

To me, it's a matter of perception. If it's your last semester/year and you are really excited about graduation being the end of school, then it does make sense to start thinking you'll just hold out until then and then be done with it. So here your perception is that graduation will happen no matter what and you just have to be above the surface of the water when the wave hits. The attitude towards the work then becomes to do as little as possible, because it'll be over soon anyway. Thing is, though, you're not really done with school's consequences at that point... a lot of the time, your final grades do matter, and if you do badly enough you might even have to spend more time in school.

But, on the other hand, if you see graduation as a final "due date" that you need to prepare for (by doing your other work) then your attitude towards the work is a bit different. The perception here is that the graduation is kind of like a big final exam or something, and the difference is that you want to do well because it matters how you do. You can either get to the end of the race and think "well, I can't NOT finish now", or get to the end of the race and start sprinting to get the best time you can.

That's all just my opinion, though. I've seen a couple of people get screwed over hard by this effect, but personally I take the second approach and push hard at the end, precisely because I know, once it's all over, how happy I'll be about what I've done.