Home work sucks. Keeping track of it all, lugging books home, and occasional misunderstanding. Trust me, I’ve been there. Especially with the misunderstanding. I have a lot of trouble in math and when there are disruptive students I get distracted and end up not understanding that night’s homework. Most teachers give time to work on homework in class so you can ask questions and get help from your teacher. But if students are throwing wads of paper and various school supplies at each other across the room then the teacher is distracted and unable to assist the students who need it. When students sit down and show enthusiasm for the subject, then so much more work gets done, grades improve, and more learning happens.

When you’re young, you don’t worry about your grades because you don’t have to. First grade is easy, all coloring and matching shapes. Second and third grade is you learn cursive and multiplication and how to write a fairy tale. Those grades matter a little more. Teachers start to evaluate how you work and place you in different levels of classes for fourth and fifth grade. These grades decide on what level you are placed in for middle school. As all middle school students know, middle schools decides high school which decides the rest of your life. So in middle school, teachers know all about how you learn, how you act, if you get your work done or not, and they treat you differently depending on this. When teachers know you don’t really like to do your homework and talk in class, they sit you near their desk so they can keep an eye on you. Basically, everything after sixth grade matters.

Elementary school is a breeze and so is sixth grade. At least compared to eighth. School is almost like riding your bike up a hill. The first half of the grades is like riding down hill, easy and fun. But once you hit middle school, a slight hill appears. With each grade, the hill gets steeper. Teachers warn with every bad grade that high school only gets harder. With each essay assigned, students think, can It really get worse? Now about half way through the school year, everybody has adjusted to two hours of homework and less sleep.

High school is the ominous building over the hill and across the road, the one where you make the bed for your life after school. Books and television give mixed information about the horrors that lie within, but everybody hits major milestones in those four years. As frightening as it sounds, I’m looking forward to the challenge of high school.