“Come watch a movie with us!” 

“I can’t. I have too much homework.” 

This is a day in the life of a teen. 

7:00 am: wake up. 8:00 am: be at school. 3:05 pm: sports practice. 5:30 pm: get home and start dinner. 7:00 pm: start homework. 

This is a schedule most teens go through to fit everything in their day. Does it look like we have enough time? 

Some students may have study hall or free periods during the day, but some do not, and I am one of them. With all the extra elective courses, BOCES, and just general credit classes, there would never be enough free periods anyway. 

For the students who have younger siblings that you need to occupy at home, you may have even less free time. 

Having to wake up from 6:00-7:00am seems hard enough right? Apparently not to some. We must be there for eight hours, learning new content, doing quizzes, tests, etc. AND take a load of homework home. Right after school, whether you have sports practice for two hours or a game that may be an hour away, you still need time to do your homework that school gives you. 

Let’s say you get back from a game at 7:45pm because it started at 5:00pm and you still need a ride home. Minus homework, you still must eat, change, take a shower (if you take night showers), and still expect us to get a full eight hours of rest at night.  

That does not seem very practical to me. 

Yesterday we learned a new subject in math class that we were given homework on. This homework took me two and a half hours to finish. Then my science homework took an hour as I had to draft a full essay and answer 20 multiple choice questions. 

To make time management more efficient, school and classes should be shortened so we can go home after and do our work, go to sports, and come home to rest. This would give us more balance in our work and home life and allow us to spend time with our family as well as have some free time each day.