It’s another beautiful afternoon. You’ve just gotten home from school. With jubilance as always, you open your backpack and gleefully take out the ten pounds of homework that you have accumulated throughout the day. Your back cracks painfully as you sit down with a grin from ear to ear. You take out your pencil, happily putting it down to the first paper in the 20-foot stack on your desk. As soon as your pencil meets the paper, a single tear runs down your cheek. You crumble, thinking about all of the work you have to do, collapsing onto the floor in a pool of tears. But, it’s almost Friday. Then you can nap all day… before you go through this again.

I don’t like homework and am sure that very few students do. While it has its benefits, homework doesn’t usually build on your personal interests. It takes up time and energy, more so than many people realize. For people with extracurriculars, hobbies, jobs, or anything else that requires a significant input of time and energy, homework takes away from the effort that they can put into those things.

As someone who has a lot of different interests, finding space where I can productively explore those interests is a frequent obstacle, as I have to structure my life around the knowledge that I will have several hours of homework every night. Now, I know that a few hours of homework doesn’t sound like a lot in terms of time, but in terms of effort expended it is. After spending several grueling hours on schoolwork, it’s difficult to do anything with the little energy left. If you’re a person with extracurriculars, it’s even harder. Most extracurriculars require a large amount of effort, and time. Either your extracurriculars will drain all of the energy you need for your homework, making it take twice as long to complete or your homework will take all of the energy you need for your extracurriculars, making it a miserable experience, rather than an opportunity to build on personal interests.

Excessive homework restricts the range of activities that students are able to engage in beyond academics. We are often only given the opportunity to focus on what is offered to us at school, and not given the space to explore our interests beyond that. It doesn’t matter how much free time we have if we have to use all of that free time to recharge the energy we lose during the day. Even on weekends, it feels like I can’t do things for my personal life because I have to make sure I have enough brain power to get me through the school week.

I am not saying that homework is inherently “bad.” It has its benefits, and I think eliminating homework is unrealistic, especially for AP and honors courses. The school day doesn’t have nearly enough time to go over all of the material that needs to be reviewed. However, that doesn’t mean that students’ lives have to be completely consumed by their studies. When teachers assign homework, I want to emphasize the importance of respecting the personal lives of students and recognizing that our lives don’t completely revolve around school.