We've all been there. Whether you're in high school or college, you have probably been assigned multiple readings, worksheets, projects to complete and studying for upcoming quizzes, tests or exams. Your planner has a list of "things to do" that is well over 15 items and you're struggling to keep up. If you're lucky enough to not experience this stressful mess, I admire you because the rest of us goes through that type of hell.
Last year I was a freshman in college. I was taking different kinds of general classes to get out of the way like most freshmen do. During my senior year of high school, I remembered we did an assignment in my health class about how many hours a day we actually need in order to do everything we want. So, during the midst of my most busy time during my freshman year, I took a break and decided to figure it out. I added up all the hours I was in class, minutes spent eating and walking to class, sleep time, and hours to do homework. Let's just say it was well over 24 hours.
Yeah, I needed 24+ hours to do things for my own personal health as well as going to class and doing the mountain of homework at that time.
Hours and hours of homework honestly doesn't help anyone. Sure, it can be really good practice and a good way to 'study' whatever happened in classes that day. But when it begins to pile up and you have 8 hours of homework to do in one day, that is when it become unnecessary. As a college student, by the end of the day I am tired and become less motivated to do my homework as the night goes on. Since I'm so tired and care less and less, the quality of my work goes down and I'm not retaining all the information like I should be. Then I become stressed about deadlines and the fact I need to do better on my homework. Homework is mentally exhausting, especially after a long day of classes.
There's too much homework for it to make an impact in our learning.
We are too busy trying to complete it all by a certain date and time that probably isn't our best work. And we are definitely not learning everything we should be from the homework. Studying becomes memorizing because there's simply not enough time to sit down and try to comprehend the material when your mind is worried about the ten other assignments that need to be done. Grades drop, which stresses out a student even more. Hours of homework causes too much stress and doesn't help anyone learn.
Teachers should reconsider the amount of homework they give their class because students are obviously taking more than one class. The the work builds up and students cannot provide their best. I don't see a change in the near-future for this problem but I'm hoping teachers will become more considerate on the homework load and realize students spend so much time in class that homework doesn't need to take the same amount of time to complete as it does to sit in class.