Re: Stress Level Override by Max Rohde

In my entire career as a student so far, life had not been harder than for me this year. As a sophomore,we have a lot of assignments to do and many tests to study for. Especially in Alameda Science and Technology Institute, the school I am currently attending, it is the harder than many other charter and public schools because we have to prepare for college within two years time. Even though this is rather short compared to the four years of high school, I believe that we students of A.S.T.I. should still have less work compared to the present work that we have but still more work compared to other high schools. I found a post from Max Rohde's blog that really relates to what I am writing about. The following quote is one of the quotes that I would say about the amount of work is to me:

"The amount of work that teachers give their ASTI students is painfully unbearable. Not only are we enrolled in difficult and advanced academic classes, bit the workload of homework, studying and tests is to a point where our precious childhood lives are being deprived from us. We are losing countless hours of sleep, and have been turned into workaholics"  - Max Rohde

In his radical blog post about the amount of homework that A.S.T.I. gives out to Sophomores, I agree with most of it. I agree that we do have a lot of homework every night. When every teacher gives out homework for us to do every night to do, I would usually work till midnight or later if I didn't have college classes during that night as well. I usually start my homework at four o' clock and only stop working on my homework when I have to shower, eat dinner, or when I have wrist cramps and need to shake loose. In my opinion, colleges classes don't even give out that much homework at all.

During the summer, I took two college classes and the amount of homework compared to school homework now is not even close at all. It takes like one-fourth of the time or two to three hours to finish it averagely. I think that A.S.T.I just wanted us to make us work continuously every night so that when we take college classes, it will be a breeze. I don't like that idea because I believe that each grade level should become only a little bit harder not dramatically harder like it is now.

During Freshman year, it was rather easy even when Ms. Valdez taught English and that we had tests everyday for her class. I finished homework in four hours at that time. Now it is like seven hours. If the amount of homework continues to increase, does that mean that we will have no sleep. It sure seems like it. This year I usually get only about five hours of sleep compared to last year where I had the normal seven hours of sleep during weekdays. That is just because I live rather close to the school and could sleep in. How about those that live in San Lorenzo or those that live in Hayward? They have to wake up at least one or two hours earlier than me because they have to go through traffic everyday. Does that mean that they only have about at most 3 hours of sleep? I guess so.

This amount of homework is stressing many students out. Students are now even willing to not complete assignments just to get some rest. Students are not liable to pay attention in class and probably sleep while the teachers are giving a lecture. Students don't get to learn this way because class time is much more important than homework because class time is a time for students to learn while homework is just to practice what we learned. Practice should not have to take seven hours but should take only 30 minutes for each subject everyday.