Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Enormous Expectations


To every junior the mention of ACTs, SATs, college essays, GPA, and class rank brings groans and complaints, yet we have barely gotten our feet wet. Junior and senior year are full of expectations most of which are enormous. We begin the year with a schedule full of honors, advanced placement, and UConn courses. Being the awesome student we are, we're also involved in numerous extracurriculars which range from play to clubs to sports. As well as all of this, the majority of us hold down jobs. Being an honors/AP/UConn kid comes with some high expectations from teachers to parents.

The teachers in these upper level classes know we are hard working students and in effect we are given a substantial amount of work. While the work in the inidivdual classes is not overwhelming the accumulation of heavy workloads in anywhere from 2 to 8 classes is where we stumble. While teachers see the work as preparation for a college work load, students see it as a 20 pound book bag that looms over them all day and late into the night. I am not trying to come off as a complainer, but college work and high school work have differences. For instance, in college, you don't get one assignment with it's due date and then have another quickly following it and so on and so forth. Instead, you recieve a syllabus which outlines the course and assignment by which you are expected to complete x number of assignments by x date. This gives you the flexibility to plan your time, while in high school you are often balancing due dates of assignments on a daily basis.

Thru a parents view, homework has both been praised and scolded. The majority of parents I have met do not have any complaints about homework. They believe it is reinstilling what has been taught during the day. Yet, a few believe that homework cuts into family time and has gotten out of control. These few believe that children should be spending more time "being a kid" and playing outside rather then sitting at a desk long into the night.

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