Summer work sucks life out of summer

in Opinion by

After a year of hard work, many students spend their summers working at jobs, studying in universities around the country, and traveling across the worlds. Unfortunately, excessive amounts of summer homework bombard students’ summer plans and forces them to reconsider their plans. There should not be such unreasonable amounts of summer work because it is redundant and does not help students prepare for next year’s classes.

Summer work is only effective to a certain point. When it becomes too much, students gain nothing from it, instead abandoning summer plans to complete it.

Overall, the amount of work students must complete during the summer to prepare for examinations and assessments the first week of school in August is overwhelming and unnecessary.

Many students must complete summer assignments for multiple subjects such as English, Physics and Calculus. Each of the assignments alone is bearable; however, the combination of assignments for multiple classes becomes increasingly difficult.

While it is important that students exercise their brains over the summer to avoid forgetting material from years past, some assignments are repetitive. For example, reading more than one novel is simply time-consuming.

Teachers and parents may stress that completing a section per day will greatly lift weight off a student’s shoulders and prevent procrastination. However, many students are busy with other priorities during the summer. They simply do not have enough time to complete the assignments at a rate quick enough to avoid stress and anxiety the days before the first day of school in August because they juggle other priorities.

Summer assignments are meant to refresh students’ knowledge. Completing hundreds of math problems and reading hundreds of pages from novels, though such assignments do review what students learned the previous year, do not minimize work while providing the most effective review of a class’s fundamental concepts.

The school year is demanding enough. For just two months out of the year, students deserve a slight respite from stressful assignments. Unfortunately, while on breaks at work or during the little free time on vacation or at summer programs, students are forced to complete hours and hours of work.