By Jay Carroll
Staff Writer

It is possibly the most dreaded word in school; we complain about it every day, and sometimes we don’t even do it. Homework, it is vital to school and success. but are we receiving too much of it?

Every day, we go to school knowing that we will receive homework in at least one class. Students really hate homework, and they will do anything to avoid going home and having to do anything involved with school.

Not to mention, some students have extra-curricular activities taking place after school, and continue for hours to where the students involved in the activity do not get home until 6 p.m., which means they would not start the homework that has been piled up on them until 6:30 or so.

I am no stranger to the amount of homework combined with extracurricular activities, I have received homework in every single core class, along with tests to study for that I will be taking the next day, along with lacrosse right after school until 6 p.m. or so. It can get frustrating and raises the stress level of most students who have been assigned a lot of homework to do.

Sometimes the amount of homework also impedes on the amount of sleep a student gets. I have heard of students not being able to go to sleep until 2 or 4 a.m. just to wake up around 7 or so.

“It also affects how much sleep we get because we stay up working on homework and then we have to wake up the next morning to go back to school, which in turn, affects our performance the next day,” sophomore band member Jennifer Love said

The lack of sleep students get due to the amount of homework can also affect health, because you need sleep in order to stay healthy. (Along with washing your hands of course.)

Being in cross country, which starts early in the morning way before school starts and having lacrosse in the afternoon, I sometimes feel the pressure and stress to complete my homework at a reasonable time so I can get enough sleep before I go to practice the next morning.

Of course I also am affected by the television, computer and phone which most of the times slows my progress to where I lose ground on homework and start to lose interest in the homework I have to do.

“It’s hard to judge, in some classes yes students are receiving too much homework, but in others it’s probably just right or a little light,” Algebra and Geometry teacher Michael Fields said. “I think what’s happening is students are doing to many activities.”

Some teachers say they are just preparing students for college with the amount of homework they give, but often college students have two days or so to complete the homework

I do not like homework, there is nothing fun about it is not fun to do, and maybe it’s just me but I think I can always do something more productive, even though I would probably just be sitting on the couch texting, watching TV, or on some sort of social networking site.

I have had times where the homework I had to do helped me in class or on the next quiz, but other times I did homework that the teacher didn’t even look over nor did they ask us to turn it in for a grade which does us no good if we did something wrong and we don’t know if we did it right because we didn’t check over it.

Homework is good for development in a student though, and that is why teachers assign it and for additional practice, but the homework will do us no good if we have to stay up late to complete it and we cannot focus the next day in school because of the lack of sleep.