It’s been too much. Way too much. This year the homework load has been too much for this tired scholar to handle. Late nights. Little sleep. Tired eyes. Stress. Too, too much.

I’ll concede something. Students will always complain about homework just as natural as dogs chase cats, the sun rises in the east and the Braves are non-competitive. Take my case: I’m a football player and try my best to keep the whole student-athlete thing going. But teachers: You’re not helping. You’re making it hard. But what do I mean?

Students are like me are constantly struggling to get on track and it has become merely impossible to get ahead of the workload. If you have to play sports, there is no shoot at you getting ahead unless you want to lose several hours of sleep each and every night. Even if you take the sleep lose route, you can still never get ahead because you will not be able to focus in class because you are so tired. Students are never to spend time with their families on the weekdays and even the breaks because teachers give homework over these days as well.

Between football practice – which seems year around now — wrestling, and track I have barely any time to get my school work done. This has taken a toll on me throughout the year. I have no time to spend with my brother who I barely get to see because he goes to a different school. Both of my parents work and are not home until late, so family time is rare around my house. The main cause of this is my school workload. This is just not a North Atlanta problem either as my brother has too much homework at the private school he goes to.

I don’t want to sound unreasonable. I guess I don’t mind a little homework. But here’s what I propose. Teachers should be obliged to coordinate among themselves to ensure that homework doesn’t all fall on the same night. Also, there should be an expectation that students have other things to do in their life rather than school work. What I purpose is that we should be given the extra 30 minutes at the end of the day to do homework that our teacher assigned us. This would lead to more productivity and more free time for when student get back home.

Students have given way too much homework this year and it has been very unfair. However, students and teachers should make a compromise and try to work things out. This way both the students and the teachers can be happy with the outcome, and there will be no more bitterness between each other.