Types of Homework (Part 2)

By Grace Litterer

     You guessed it. It’s the highly-anticipated, long-awaited sequel to Types of Homework. As I am a week older and a week farther into junior experience, I have some wonderful new insights to add to my types of homework list.
      The third type of homework I have to talk about is homework that I have become well-acquainted with over the years: Makeup Homework. Makeup homework is not fun. Of course, it depends on the class, but, more often than not, this is one of the most stressful types of homework. First, you have to go to the teacher and talk to them about the homework, what you have to do, when it is due, how to do it, etc. Next, you talk to the other students in the class. You clarify everything with them. Is this how you do it? Is this the answer you got? Is this how long yours was? Finally, you turn it in. That’s the end of it, or so you thought. A few days later one of two things can happen and have happened to me. Either, you get the assignment back and you got an F because, apparently, you were supposed to include something else, like a quote from the text, but the teacher never mentioned anything like that. Or, you find out that you have a missing assignment in the grade book because there was another assignment that you had to do that you didn’t know about. Both have happened to me, and I can honestly say that it is the worst to realize that, because you were gone, you have a failing grade and/or you have to spend the extra time redoing the assignment you did wrong. It’s especially a lot to contend with if you miss the whole day because that’s six to eight classes you have makeup work for on top of the homework that was assigned that day.
      The fourth type of homework is the Time-Consuming Homework. Now, you may be thinking, all homework takes time. You are correct, my friend, all homework does take time, but not all homework takes hours, or so it feels like, to complete. Now, there are different assignments that can be time-consuming, but the main one is notes. Notes take a long time, or what feels like a long time, to complete. First, you have to read the page/section/chapter or what feels like the whole book. I’ve found that it is really tough to focus on a textbook, especially when you are tired and you are doing your homework at 6:30 or 7:00 after work or sports practice or who knows what else. There have been many times when I have fallen asleep to the boring words of the cell cycle or the Revolutionary War or the types of verbs only to wake up at 9:00 and finish my notes. After you’ve read the section, or at least skimmed it, you have to set up your structure. Finally, you have to write your notes. You have to somehow make sure to include all of the information in the text, use your own wording, and try to keep it from being 13 pages long, which is an actual number of note pages I have had over one section. So, yeah, notes aren’t that fun.
     As you can see, I had a lot to say about homework, and honestly, I still do, but I won’t bore you with yet another page-and-a-half of me complaining about all the time I spend on homework. No, I will spare you the details, but just know that there are many different types of homework and that students have to deal with all of them. So please, cut us some slack.