By J1 Reporter Gabriella Rodriguez

Students have homework; it’s a logical deduction. Homework is assigned to help learn, but the simple idea of a 20-minute, easy worksheet isn’t always reality.

Teachers, parents and even the students themselves have high expectations for general academic standards. “I think we are definitely held to a super high standard, and that’s a good thing,” said sophomore Brynley Thompson. “But again, we need to find a healthy balance with that. I think that parents do a good job of keeping their kids accountable, but also making sure that they know that they’re always there to help,” Thompson said.

Homework, like most schools, is part of these expectations. It’s a way of practicing and applying skills learned in school, but when there are excessive amounts of it, different results than intended can show up.

“I think short assignments should definitely be seen as intentional, but sometimes like busy work. I think, sometimes, for the students, test reviews and those preparations help a lot. Sometimes, I feel like the extra points are really just busy work, and they don’t exactly help us outside of class as much more than just doing this for the class,” said Thompson.

Not only do Marian students have homework, though. Sports, clubs, jobs volunteerings, family obligations and other extracurricular activities take up their time, as well.

Evelin Langenfeld, a sophomore at Marian, has experienced this. Because of soccer practices, she gets home around 8 or 9 pm. Even though she feels that she doesn’t get assigned “busy work,” the average of two hours of homework she receives on a daily basis still feels insane to her.

“Homework doesn’t affect my extracurricular because I just have to do them anyways,” Langenfeld said. “But it does affect, like, family events and stuff outside of school because it doesn’t leave me with any free time, and then my parents get mad at me because I’m up in my room all night doing homework and stuff like that.”

Another student has a similar, yet slightly different, opinion.

“I definitely feel like projects [affect your schedule out of school], like the character mind map. I spent a lot of time on that, and I had a lot of things I did this weekend, so I had to do it at 9 o’clock at night, which isn’t very preferred. There are some projects that probably take more time than they’re worth,” sophomore Audree Aupperle said.

Even though Aupperle has an hour of homework or less on a daily basis, she does feel that homework, specifically projects or even tests, can affect students’ schedules and mental health. Aupperle said that not understanding difficult assignments is where frustration sets in for students.

“If you have a big test that you’re studying for and you have no idea what’s going on in the class, it can be really frustrating to try and figure it all out on your own. If a teacher doesn’t explain a project well enough and there isn’t much direction on Canvas, then it is really frustrating to be able to try to complete it,” states Aupperle.

Homework has always been a task for students, but the amount of it has fluctuated over the years. Aupperle and Langenfeld share two different perspectives.

Aupperle begins by talking about her experience at a public school. Since she didn’t have a study hall, she always worked on her assignments during the last parts of her 45-minute classes. Aupperle says that since Marian teachers tend to teach until the bell rings, study hall holds a lot of importance at Marian. She states that public school is much different than private school.

Aupperle then goes on to explain how homework changed from ninth to tenth grade.

“Freshman year, I feel like PreAP [History] did take up a lot of my time with all the notes. I’m not taking a history class at this moment. I will next semester, but this semester, I’m in personal finance. Personal finance doesn’t have much homework. I’m still working until the bell in my study hall most of the time. So, there is still a lot of homework for me to do, but there definitely is less than last year without PreAP.”

Langenfeld says that she barely worked on homework outside of school when she was still in middle school. She took an advanced math class in eighth grade, but that class was the only thing she felt was academically challenging about middle school. However, Langenfeld definitely felt unprepared for high school’s increase in workload.“As soon as I got to sophomore year,” Langenfeld said. “It was insane. I would honestly say [it is] double freshman year.”

Students have homework, it’s inevitable. It’s up to us, though, on how we use homework to grow or fall behind.