So much school, so little time

On average, students spend about 3.5 hours a night working on homework. Although this may not seem like a lot, it's only unsubstantial if school is the only contributing factor in your life. In order to keep up with the high demands of colleges, just attending, or even thriving, in school is not nearly enough. If you want to be accepted into a competitive college then on top of your 3.5 hours of homework, you also should be playing a sport, doing some sort of work, whether it is influenced by pay or strictly volunteer, and you are expected to not only participate in, but take a leadership role with some sort of extracurricular activity, such as a club. Studies show that in order for a high school student to be able to perform throughout the day, they should have gotten an average of  8.5 hours of sleep the night prior. In summation, a high school student is expected to attend school for seven hours, continue to do homework for another 3.5 hours, attend their job, focus on their extracurriculars, and take part in a sport in order to stay active and healthy. In my opinion, this is unrealistic. It just doesn't seem possible to maintain a healthy sleeping schedule, a satisfactory grade point average, along with having any sort of time to participate in any social events. That being said, I believe there should only be a certain amount of homework allowed each night. In a way, I think homework does take part in helping our memory store all of the things we learned throughout the day. However, this task can be completed without the excess busy work. If given the chance, many students can prove to be successful throughout their high school career without having hours worth of homework each night. As an alternative solution, teachers could also choose to make homework optional. This way, if the student feels unprepared in a class, then they have extra practice available to them. However, if a student feels as if they are fully informed on a certain unit, then the homework would be redundant to them. Although this may seem like a poor path for teachers to choose due to the belief that no student would do homework, we should be trusted to take care of our own education. High school is preparation for college, and the rest of our life in years to come. If we are given the power to make our own life decisions in the future, then making homework a choice would just be another way of preparing us for the real world.