Homework

[Stigmata]

Homework was always my academic weakness, as I always viewed it to be tedious busywork. I can somewhat understand the concept behind it of learning through repetition, but it should only be something given out to struggling students rather than ones that are excelling in the class. If someone is understanding the curriculum, isn't that the main point of all of it? What purpose does continually pounding them with more work beyond that of the designated amount of time for the course if they aren't in danger of failing?

 

[Usehername]

No homework = no reason to do the assigned reading. No reason to do the assigned reading = no students do it. No students engaging with the discipline's knowledge base, if only to push off of it and share their opinion. This makes for superlame class discussions that could come from my precocious eleven-year-old cousin's brain.

All of the people on this forum have some degree of nerddom to them, so many of us would be one of those freakish students who does the readings and critically engages with it for knowledge's sake.

I am baffled by how many of my students are uninterested in learning even when their grades are on the line. Whytf would you not come see your instructor if you failed paper #1 and your instructor wrote "come see me so we can talk, because paper #2 requires successfully using what we learned in paper #1."

Do you understand that there's no point in doing the future work if you don't get a basic grasp of the foundational stuff? Why are you wasting your time in my class if you don't even care enough to come see me when I tell you to do so if you want any hope of even lamely passing?

When I was only a student I was blind to the number of idiots* who don't care to pause and think about their own interests.

*If you made it to a four year college, you can figure out that paying tuition to fail a course out of nothing but laziness and total lack of commitment is dumb. You can figure out that if you're failing and the teacher says "you absolutely need to do this to pass" that at the very least they hold the power to your pass/fail status. And because they hold the power you should care about your grades enough to try and take some action like going to office hours even just once, or maybe even doing what they say you need to do to pass, etc.

Why do you come to class and sit in a desk if you've charted a course to literal failure and are making no readjustments along the way? Why haven't you dropped this course yet?!

Either work or stop coming to my class!

I mean idiots in the sense that they are the ones screwing themselves over with terrible choices and behaviours, not in any intellectual sense.


/rant.

 

[kyuuei]

I generally don't like homework.. I don't mind the "work", it is the "home" I dislike on it. I'm pretty environmental.. I lack a place in my house that promotes studying, so the less done at home the better I will remember it or be able to focus on it.

So how I get through it is breaking it up into little pieces. If I can go somewhere else to do it (cafe, library, friend's house, etc.) I will every time. I figure out what I hate the most on it, and do that part first. Then I progressively do the easier pieces. If it is a long assignment, like a research paper or lots of math homework, I do the opposite.. doing the easiest pieces first as I get more accomplished in a shorter period of time, and getting a lot done sometimes promotes me to get it all done. When having to read books or chapters, I split it up by number of pages a day, and I usually take small notes in the sides of the book to remind me of things I thought might be important for quick reference.

My favorite type of homework: Finishing up classwork, summarizing/writing my opinion on a passage or short story, and short answer questions.
My least favorite type of homework: Research papers, essays longer than a page, chapters of reading at a time with little focus on which sections of the chapter I should be memorizing the most, and math homework that exceeds 50 problems.

 

[prplchknz]

I don't like homework. I have at least 2 papers due next tuesday. One on Nihilism and a response paper, I'm not sure when my 3rd paper's due but I'm doing Bill Cosby as a symbol. so part of my homework this weekend is to re watch old episodes of the Cosby Show.

 

[Cat_Cloud]

As weird as it seems, I wouldn't mind a more structured environment for work that I don't like doing. If I could just do all my work at school during a designated time period where I had the resources at hand to do it and nothing else to do, I might make more of an effort.QUOTE]

I completely agree. I get so much more done at school than at home when we have work time.

 

[Hera]

I generally don't like homework.. I don't mind the "work", it is the "home" I dislike on it. I'm pretty environmental.. I lack a place in my house that promotes studying, so the less done at home the better I will remember it or be able to focus on it.

So how I get through it is breaking it up into little pieces. If I can go somewhere else to do it (cafe, library, friend's house, etc.) I will every time. I figure out what I hate the most on it, and do that part first. Then I progressively do the easier pieces. If it is a long assignment, like a research paper or lots of math homework, I do the opposite.. doing the easiest pieces first as I get more accomplished in a shorter period of time, and getting a lot done sometimes promotes me to get it all done. When having to read books or chapters, I split it up by number of pages a day, and I usually take small notes in the sides of the book to remind me of things I thought might be important for quick reference.

My favorite type of homework: Finishing up classwork, summarizing/writing my opinion on a passage or short story, and short answer questions.
My least favorite type of homework: Research papers, essays longer than a page, chapters of reading at a time with little focus on which sections of the chapter I should be memorizing the most, and math homework that exceeds 50 problems.

Maybe that's my problem. I don't have a computer desk, I do my homework on my bed with a laptop. Not only that, I spoil myself with snacks and my notes are all over and I end up snoozing and waking up to crumpled papers because this is not the right environment for school work! I lack a good place to think. I find myself making essay notes in lecture because it's the "place" to make notes.

Even so, I'm shit at getting things done. I never hand it in late, I will beg for an extension before I do that, but I drag my feet all the way.

 

[Hera]

No homework = no reason to do the assigned reading. No reason to do the assigned reading = no students do it. No students engaging with the discipline's knowledge base, if only to push off of it and share their opinion. This makes for superlame class discussions that could come from my precocious eleven-year-old cousin's brain.

All of the people on this forum have some degree of nerddom to them, so many of us would be one of those freakish students who does the readings and critically engages with it for knowledge's sake.

I am baffled by how many of my students are uninterested in learning even when their grades are on the line. Whytf would you not come see your instructor if you failed paper #1 and your instructor wrote "come see me so we can talk, because paper #2 requires successfully using what we learned in paper #1."

Do you understand that there's no point in doing the future work if you don't get a basic grasp of the foundational stuff? Why are you wasting your time in my class if you don't even care enough to come see me when I tell you to do so if you want any hope of even lamely passing?

When I was only a student I was blind to the number of idiots* who don't care to pause and think about their own interests.

*If you made it to a four year college, you can figure out that paying tuition to fail a course out of nothing but laziness and total lack of commitment is dumb. You can figure out that if you're failing and the teacher says "you absolutely need to do this to pass" that at the very least they hold the power to your pass/fail status. And because they hold the power you should care about your grades enough to try and take some action like going to office hours even just once, or maybe even doing what they say you need to do to pass, etc.

Why do you come to class and sit in a desk if you've charted a course to literal failure and are making no readjustments along the way? Why haven't you dropped this course yet?!

Either work or stop coming to my class!

I mean idiots in the sense that they are the ones screwing themselves over with terrible choices and behaviours, not in any intellectual sense.


/rant.

Ahahaha a teacher. My sister is a teacher, so is her husband (ESFJ and ISTJ). I understand the idea behind homework. I would tweak the idea though. For example, I learn better in structured environments, perhaps to counter my own lack of structure. I am in post-secondary, and still find it extremely difficult to "get to work." I digress. My perception of structure is very specific though. I am enrolled in 4 courses right now, and of those 4, one of them has no tests, no quizzes. Only class work and essays. Granted, they're pretty heavy and worth a lot on account of the lack of tests, but I prefer it. In fact, I'm learning so much more this way because I can absorb the readings better knowing there's no additional pressure. In total, there are about 4 assignments in this class. I am able to engage myself to the readings because I feel like I'm there to learn, not memorize. To me, memorization is the worst thing any learning institution can implement as a rule. To me, it lacks intellectual structure, and is intended to make things simpler for the instructor, not the student. Again, this is my view on it if I had to change anything. While essays are not exactly about memorization, they're about structure and not the kind I like, despite how well I do on them after I stop bitching and do it.

I am, however, a straight A student, and I can bitch and complain until I'm blue in the face (and I often do), but I'm paying a lot of money to go to post-secondary and I'm not going to waste it because I would prefer my courses to be less stringent on workload. I have a lot of respect for teachers because I know how it is. Seriously, sometimes I mark my sister's tests and I just can't understand how some students are failing. They just fail because they don't want to do well, and it's disappointing because I've gone to her school a few times and met her students. They're incredibly bright, but very much disinterested in passing. She offers chances and extra assignments to boost their marks to a 45 (which I think is then bumped to 50 on the system) -- No effort at all.

 

[Perch420]

I either don't do it at all or do it or do it in between periods. High School in general feels like a waste of time. I learn more in a day at home than a month at school.

 

[Perch420]

The idea of homework itself makes me less willing to do it than anything else. I don't like the thought that I'm doing something for someone else that benefits neither myself nor the other person. It's pointless and a waste of everybody's time, but I still have to do it because that's "the way it is". I also don't like being forced to learn; learning is a natural process and institutionalized education does nothing except turn finding out about the world we live in into a rote, regimented activity. Why is our society so intellectually uncurious? We blame it on TV and video games, but the real culprit is school. If you had to go to a room where people watched you have sex and judge you and arbitrarily assign grades on your performance, people would have sex a lot less.

 

[Hera]

If you had to go to a room where people watched you have sex and judge you and arbitrarily assign grades on your performance, people would have sex a lot less.

Or just improve their game to keep going at it.

 

[ceecee]

I didn't particularly like homework (I don't know who does) but I always kept this in mind when I was finishing my degree. No one else decides my grade but me. I don't accept less than an A so what do I have to do to make that happen? Homework? Done.

 

[garbage]

Depends on the homework. I always get it done, but I'm biased toward stuff that I actually know how to do without having to do the reading, or that I find halfway interesting. Luckily, the latter comes when I have the freedom to choose my own courses.

I do appreciate it when instructors actually structure their courses such that homework isn't the end in and of itself, but rather a stepping stone toward learning the material.

Why haven't you dropped this course yet?!

Haha, yeah, working with a bunch of professors, this question comes up a lot with them. When you're still failing a course one day before the drop date.. ... you should probably drop.

 

[mmhmm]

i hate homework. prefer coursework.