The Second Job Called Homework

            Recently I had a very important thought pointed out to me by some other students and a parent.  Many kids these days spend 7-9 hours a day at school, 5 days a week.  If a job is considered full time, you are working 40 hours a week (8 hours a day, 5 days a week) or more.  This means that we go to school, and don’t get paid, and it is the equivalent of a full time job.  On top of the fact that just being at school could be a full time job, we are then given homework to do when we get home.

            There have been many nights that I have been given over 8 hours of homework.  My average night of homework is probably around 6 hours.  However, there has been multiple times that I have begun my homework when I get home around 3 and I am doing it until 3 the next morning when I give up and decide everything I am reading is really just going in through my eyeballs and out my ears.  One thing to remember also, all the homework done after 9 or 10, depending on the sleep the night before, is taking at least twice as long as it has to.

            Personally, there have been many nights where I have fallen asleep while doing my homework and woken up to my alarm the next morning.  However, I have learned a few tricks this year to staying up late and pulling “all nighters” this year:

1.      Drinking caffeine, it seems so cliché, but it really does work.  I usually go through all the pop in my refrigerator and find which one has the highest caffeine content because the less you have to use the bathroom, the better.

2.      Setting an alarm on your phone and then hitting the snooze every time it goes off so that if you do doze off, it wakes you back up and you don’t end up waking up in the morning with nothing done.

3.      Texting someone else doing the same thing you are doing, it makes your homework take longer, but it keeps you awake throughout the night.

4.      Only do the homework that you have to do.  Don’t bother with reading assignments unless you have a quiz the next day.  Generally you are safe with waiting till the next night to do the reading.

5.      Do all your homework on the weekends that you know you have due the next week.  You will really appreciate having less during the week and getting more sleep.

The biggest thing is, many times we, as students, are being given homework to double the hours we are spending at school.  This means, that many of us are doing the equivalent of working two separate full time jobs, one at home and one at work.

Teachers really should give us less homework.  Many times we are asked why we are so tired at school and told we need to get a better night of sleep.  However, we are being given too much homework to allow this and therefore should not be blamed when we fall asleep during class.

 

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