The thought that has been in my head for a while now has been about the future, but more specifically...extracurriculars. And especially homework during extracurriculars. Although I might seem biased because I'm doing this blog while sitting in the theory room during a V-show performance, I'm actually not. This blog or rant will probably benefit most people in our class.
For most things, teachers say that they won't take "I had volleyball" or "I had choir" as an excuse for undone work. If it is something that should have been done in class or was assigned a while ago, then I agree with the teachers, but things due the next day can be reconsidered. May I also assume that most teachers want their students to be successful in life? With that assumption, I will now go on the rant as to why teachers should allow the occasional missed or not done homework assignment.
For us to do well in life, in this era, we must keep every second of our day booked. It could have sports, V-show, dance, or stamp collecting, but whatever it is-our lives are full with it. So that means that on some occasions, we probably won't have time to take our 7 hour and 15 minute life back home with us because we are already trying to get far in life with something else. If my assumption is correct about teachers, then teachers should probably understand that sometimes we can't do your homework assignment because we already have our day filled. We are trying to be successful in our extra stuff as well as school, but to do really well in school, sometimes you have to take out extracurriculars and then colleges write you off as not being well rounded enough.
As well as putting us ahead in the collegiate world, it also could be better for our health. Most sports help relieve stress as well as keep you in shape. Most people I know are now comparing how long they stayed up at night doing homework after all their extra things after school. If sports help relieve stress, then what are we doing trying to put back all the stress by staying up late worrying about all our teachers being upset if we don't have something completed, or not the teachers, just the idea that bad grades lead to bad college then to a bad life so we might as well not be doing anything at all.
I'm pretty confident that most or even all would want us to do stuff during the school day. But when I say day, I actually mean the 7 hours and 15 minutes we're at school. Doesn't that seem like an extremely large amount of time to learn during the day anyway? So why then are we adding another 5 hours afterwards?
I guess what I'm really saying is that I realized that sometimes extracurriculars should come first before homework because maybe going to sleep earlier will help us learn more in class, in fact it probably will.
Welcome to the world of well rounded people that will die 30 years early because we're having more heart attacks on Monday from stress and dying from sleep deprivation.
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Wow Mary. This was a very very well-written post. I could not agree with you more. I hate life like this. Go to school. Freak out about every test and every hw assignment. Worry about grades. Do extra-curriculars. Be worried about your future, that will probably be thrown off either way. IT'S AWFULLY STRESSFUL.I HATE LIVING THIS KIND OF LIFE. I keep reminding myself,"Two more years, then we're off too college. Atleast that's less rigid."
ReplyDeleteOne way I try to deal with it, is just don't care and have fun. Don't worry about grades. Goof off in class. Just have fun. It sounds like a good plan, but I ended in a deeper whole, because I got too carried away with goofing about and being careless. It was fun, and stress-free, but it eventually still hurt.
It is just too hard. School is fun and I'm learning, but there is so much pressure, especially for people like us who have extremely high expectations whether set by ourselves, our parents etc. From now, people are saying,"Fatima! That girl is a genius, she's going to Harvard." It's not that I don't believe in myself, but it's competitive...and trying to get there is killing me, in the long run anyway.
I really don't expect to live to 100 anymore. That's sad that I know that, and I still can't do anything to change it or as Ismael put it, I think?, "We have dug such a deep whole that we can't even get back out of it." All in all, We're doomed.
Hmm. Well, I do agree that people are over-scheduled a lot. I also think that you mentioned that one-day assignments are tough, which is why block scheduling is godly.
ReplyDeleteI disagree with you that extracurriculars are often more important than school. Let's face it, a lot of teenagers don't really know where they're going, and a lot of us that do probably won't end up there. As much as somebody our age might love tennis or singing or yearbook, there's a depressingly small chance that we'll end up being professional tennis players or singers or...whatever yearbook leads to. That's why school is so important- it provides a strong foundation to whatever you want to go to. You know that kid in math class that always asks "what are we going to use this for"? It doesn't really matter, because in a class of 30 somebody will use systems of equations for their financial job someday.
I'm not trying to put down extracurriculars- as I'm very devoted to a few myself -but school really should come first.
I liked this post a lot because it's a problem that plagues not just me, but several of my friends as well. I definitely feel that extracurriculars suck up a large portion of time from the day, and when you get back home at 9 o'clock and still have several hours of homework to do, it can be tough. I also notice that when I do well, my parents like to take credit for it. But when I don't do so well, it's something I've done wrong, something I need to fix. But I guess c'est la vie.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with your point that we create pressure for ourselves. college is looming and it dominates a lot of our thoughts. We need to get good grades to get into a good college to get a good job and make lots of money. That one bad test will ruin our lives because it will lower our gpa. A break from that kind of thinking would be nice, but once again, c'est la vie.