HOW TO MAKE HOMEWORK NOT
SO HORRIBLE
STUFF YOU MAY NOT HAVE LEARNED IN MIDDLE SCHOOL: A NAZI WORLD WAR II SUBMARINE WAS SUNK DUE TO THE MALFUNCTION OF A TOILET.
Apparently, going to school for eight hours a day isn’t enough. For some reason, your teachers also believe an extra hour or two of schoolwork each night is a good idea. Homework may be the world’s greatest invention or the world’s worst—who knows? But we do know it probably isn’t going away anytime soon.
Before we offer you a few thoughts about making the most of your homework, we thought it might be a good idea to explain why you have it in the first place.
A few of the reasons you have homework are—
• 45 minutes of class time usually isn’t enough time to understand the concepts.
• Working on your own is a good skill to learn.
• Homework in middle school prepares you for homework in high school, which prepares you for homework in college.
• Your teachers want to ruin your life. Okay, that’s not true. Well, maybe it is. No, it’s not. But maybe...?
Since homework probably isn’t going to disappear, how do you make it not so horrible?
Give yourself less homework to start with. Right now you may be thinking, Okay, Marko and Kurt, what planet do you live on? I don’t give my self homework! Let us explain. Some teachers will give you a few minutes in class to start working on your homework. When that happens, take advantage of it. If you spend those 10 to 15 minutes working on homework instead of goofing with your friends or shooting spit wads at the cute girl, then you will, in fact, be giving yourself less homework.
Do your homework right away. The only thing worse than doing your homework right away is putting it off and worrying about it all evening.
Split it up. If you have a lot of homework, don’t try to do it all in one sitting. Work for 20 or so minutes at a time, and then give yourself a break in between to clear your mind.
Reread chapter 2 of this book. You may need to remind yourself that homework is part of the learning process and learning is a really good thing. (Do you remember us saying that back in the second chapter?) If you can see the true value of homework, it might not be so horrible.