You could easily say that school is our job. We work from 7:20 a.m. to 2:10 p.m., stay after school for sports and other activities and return home late at night around dinner time to continue doing work. There are no perks for this job, like getting vacation days and the option to leave early on Fridays like many adults do. Work here at Langley is non-stop and unrelenting and it won’t improve over the years.

I’m not saying that homework is a waste of time; it is beneficial in many ways like expanding what you learned in school that day and allowing for further practice for tests and quizzes in the future. We do have the benefit of an “every other day” schedule which makes doing homework less stressful and allows time to do enjoyable things (like relaxing, my favorite).

Some days you are blessed and have almost no homework and you celebrate running out of school looking forward for a day of relaxing. Other days you have a lab report, an essay, three worksheets and chapter 24 to read for a history reading quiz the next day. In this case, a sheer look of terror appears in your face with beads of sweat running down your forehead as you contemplate how on earth you will manage to pull this off.

I rely on my planner. I think I might even overuse it, as I track long-term projects, daily homework and upcoming tests and quizzes on a daily basis. I even expand its use further by writing down after-school activities and weekend events that may coincide with the time I dedicate to do homework that is somehow always put off until late Sunday night.

Many of us in the Langley community are very active, spending hours on end participating in afterschool activities like sports and clubs, and finally going home to work on homework. I’m not saying that homework is a bad thing, but I must admit that it is nice every once in a while to get a break and do stuff we like to do, like relax.