Homework

I really, really do not care for homework.

Now, it’s not that I’m lazy. My track record at my actual jobs speaks for itself in that regard. The issues I have with homework are many and varied, but it’s really less about laziness than it is about everything else.

The biggest problem I had with homework was the fact that it was piled on top of everything else I already had to do. If I’ve just spent eight hours in high school, I do not come home and go “gee, now I think I’ll spend hours on homework, what a great use of my time!” After dealing with all the issues that school presents I want to come home and recharge from that and not have to worry about it constantly until the next day because my math teacher is allergic to not giving us homework (it was always math for some reason). As far as I was concerned, my time outside of school was mine and if the teachers didn’t care for that they could take a flying leap, by preference off some large building or another.

That’s still a problem that I face, although markedly reduced, now that I’m in college. I spend vastly less time in class than I used to, and the classes are far smaller and just less stressful to deal with. As such, I feel like I have more time to deal with things outside of class and by extension homework is less of an intrusion.

Then we have the fact that by and large homework is almost entirely pointless. My school district’s math classes were all apparently obligated to give homework daily. Daily. Alright, fine, let’s be charitable and say they’re only about ten problems each. Oh, and to do question 3 you need to do subquestions 3a, 3b, 3c…you can see where I’m going. Plus it’s all mind-obliteratingly boring, it’s always just “repeat the same problems over and over again, just with slight differences!”

Why!?

I don’t actually mind math, when it’s not of the academic memorize-and-regurgitate formula that teachers are in love with. My dad asked me to figure out how many more pages of a magazine he’d need to sell ad space for before it was profitable to bump the page number up and I helped him write an algebra equation for it. It took an hour. It was actually somewhat fun. What’s the deal here?

And this problem hasn’t gone away with college, no sir. My homework is dragging my grade down unnecessarily because I would rather pry my fingernails off with a crowbar than do the same problems over and over again while I feel my brain turn into low-calorie gluten-free oatmeal substitute from the sheer boredom of it. Both tests I’ve had so far I’ve gotten an A on. I aced one of them. I know the bloody material, now if I didn’t have to pulp my own head against a brick wall to prove it, that’d be highly appreciated, professor!

Thus concludes my rant for the week, hope you all find it helpful!