Pressure. No personal time. No rest. No social time. Exhaustion. Fatigue.

It can all be summed up in one word: Homework.

To sophomore Andy Guillen, this is not news. 

“There are large amounts in a way that I cannot relax and have some personal time with my friends and family,” he said.

Homework is an everyday activity students work on. However, how much is enough homework? Since 1994, the average amount of hours students spent was around 3.5 hours per week. Nowadays, high school students will do 17.5 hours of homework a week according to Grade Power Learning. Teachers will usually assign around 3.5 hours of homework for each subject. According to Education Week, students should complete an average 2 hours of homework each day which is ten hours a week.

Sophomore Yarethsi Leal, 15, is also experiencing the negative effects of too much homework in her daily life. 

“I don’t have time to relax and with dance taking too much time, and I have to stay up late at night to finish my homework which makes me exhausted,”  she said.

Too much homework given to high school students can lead to health problems which can be dangerous for students’ health and academic lives. Some health effects include extreme stress, sleep deprivation, stomach problems, fatigue, and social problems such as isolation and aggression. If not sleeping enough, it can cause too little concentration in class and could dangerously lower grades and GPA. In addition, too much homework can demoralize them in school as they feel hopeless that they will never finish their homework and will instead gain more stress than feel relaxed.

Sophomore Yunuhen Trevino states, “makes me feel stressed and I don’t feel motivated because I feel like I won’t finish.”

The amount of homework assigned to students makes them feel like not starting something they won’t finish.