A common issue talked about amongst students is the toll of homework on their everyday lives. A lot of homework causes major amounts of stress on students and too much stress can have some very horrible effects, especially for teenagers. Stress could cause insomnia, mood swings, anxiety, and depression.

Homework also takes tremendous amounts of time away from students that could be used for after school activities or socializing with friends and family. This is important because socialization can help with a teenagers sense of being a part of a community and being accepted.

Everyone that was interviewed for this article, around 10 people, was at least part of one club or after school activity. The general amount of time that was spent on homework was anywhere from 3-4 hours a night. This amount of time is very demanding especially if you have an after school activity or commitment like a club or a job, which most students do.

More than half of the students said that they did not spend a lot of time with friends outside school, and if they do, its only on weekends. This severely hurts students’ social life outside of school hours. A few students talked about wanting to join another club or do more activities but not being able to because of the amount of homework to they have to do.

What is the reason for the large amounts of homework?

While interviewing the different students, almost all said their amount of homework depends on what day they are on in their schedule. I asked them if they feel like this schedule makes teachers give them more homework. Just over half of the students said yes, that due to this schedule teachers think that the students have more time to do it when in actuality they do not.

While this was a common answer it was not the only one; another common answer was that the length of homework is so long because of procrastination.

To get the feelings of even more students, I went to the school counselors. The question they answered was simply, “Do students frequently talk about their struggles of homework? If so, what are the main struggles talked about?”

The answer was yes, students do talk about homework and how hard it can become. The thing that really stood out was that students feel there is a disconnect between getting good grades on homework and doing well on test and quizzes.

The other interesting thing that was said when I asked this question was that students talk about the difficulties of  this schedule and not being able to do after school activities. The students were asked about the disconnect between homework and tests, but none of the interviewed students seemed to agree. They all thought homework helped them to a certain extent.

Students have a very heavy amount of homework most days of their school week. This homework, while it helps with tests, causes lots of stress and, also takes up a huge amount of time. This time commitment causes students to participant in less activities and have less time to socialize outside of school. Some reasons for this could be because of the new schedule because it causes teachers to think students have more time for homework. The other reasons is due to procrastination on the students end. The average time spent on homework is around 3-4 hours a night not including studying. All this points to a picture of the overburdened life of a student at Loyola.