The No Homework Policy

An early experience in making my own rules came when I entered high school. In the first weeks of my freshman year, I tried to do everything right. I did what I was told to do — and this included my homework. After lacrosse practice and my after-school job at a local supermarket, I got home around 8:00p.m. Then I had to eat some dinner, do homework, and go to sleep so I could wake up and do it all over again.

For the first weeks, I forged ahead with this plan. There was a certain amount of reading for history class, problems to be solved for math, and similar nightly assignments from English, political science, chemistry, biology, and more. The workload added up, and wasn’t particularly fast at reading or math. But that first week, I was determined to get it all done.

I quickly discovered that trying to complete all the homework assigned to me meant staying up almost all night, every night. I couldn’t quit lacrosse — I’d founded the team and was its captain. And I needed my job in order to contribute to the family income.

So I decided the homework needed to go. My plan was simple. I would work as hard as possible to pay attention and be completely focused in each class, but I would not bring my books home, and I would not do any of the homework assigned to me. If the homework was intended to reinforce what was taught in class, I would be fine because I would make sure to absorb it all during the school day. Once I landed on this solution, a sense of relief washed over me. All that was left was the small matter of communicating my “No Homework Policy” to my teachers.

The next day, one by one, I walked each of my teachers through my plan. The conversation went pretty much the same with all of them. First, I said hello and reintroduced myself. Then I explained that I’d been attempting to do all my homework for the past two weeks. I told them that doing the work took me until approximately 3:00 a.m. Regrettably, this was unsustainable. Then I introduced my No Homework Policy.

Some of the teachers laughed, but ultimately all of them told me in their own ways that if I really wanted to go ahead with this, I could, but it would affect my overall grade. I agreed that this was totally fair and it made sense to me. I think they were a little taken aback that this part didn’t scare me away from…