Sometimes students are swamped with homework—so busy finishing ‘homework’ and ‘assignments’ and ‘papers’ due on black and white hardcopy for their teachers/professors to see it to assess it therefore ‘homework’ in itself becomes suck a repetitive, ‘have-to-do’, boring, mechanical task of doing work assessed to you and writing up evidence for it.

For those of you with less then perfect short-term memory and cognitive (concentration) like me, you would come to realize that not much filters into the crucial retention layers of the brain while hustling to get your work done on paper for evidence of completion to submit to avoid being penalized by the school system.

My subtle point:

HOMEWORK WITHOUT RETENTION IS F-U-T-I-L-E AND U-S-E-L-E-S-S

…and certainly does not benefit the student (even if its ups his grades). What will she learn at the end of the semester?

Study I believe is the mental and, if required, physical scrutiny of a certain subject material basically for the purpose of ‘learning’.

Therefore if the act of ‘studying’ begets ‘learning’ and the mechanical homework doing begets nothing but grades and ‘no learning’ then the student obviously knows ‘nothing to little’ at the end of the semester.

DO YOUR HOMEWORK!

That all to common command might no necessarily help you. But wait… refrain from contradicting your parents and teachers and professors just yet.

Consider my life plight. I currently have deep and clashing concerns… with my sister, four years my junior, who promptly, repetitively, and without exception, goes to bed no later than nine in the evening, after having completed the blessed ‘homework’, watched TV, chat online…etc…etc…while she currently attends second form of my former high school, which happens to be the best even nationally where I come from.

In my year—that was hardly the time of my turning in, and definitely my closing off hours had occasional fluctuations.

Therefore… I have come to a dual-conclusion: that either my sister is genius at hiding her genius of repetitively getting off with sufficient enough work to get her to bed nightly at nine…or something just isn’t being done.

The ‘thing’ that is being omitted and crucially forgotten, is ‘study’.

In academic terminology, “study” means the ‘re-capping’ process of work done for a subject after its period of teaching and the reading ‘preparation’ done for said subject on topics hinted to be discussed in the next period. Study also refers to ‘clarification’ of certain problematic areas in the subject cropped up after regular or sufficient ‘reviewing’ or ‘re-capping’ of taught subject material—with either the teacher/professor or the required text or any related text. Study goes FURTHER to include ‘reviewing homework’—sometimes this is only witnessed in the classroom.

Back to my sister…here I present to you one of my startling but crystal clear discoveries that will more than back my point:

My beloved sister Patrice has French homework: ‘translate the French for the given English words’ which she does—French-English dictionary in tact—words are translated—written evidence of having done the homework is completed—she closes her books—done! Nobody can say that Patrice did not do her homework.

French teacher attends class next day—‘reviews’ homework (refer to my definition of study—it involves reviewing homework somewhere in there) therefore the only ‘study’ taking place is when the teacher reviews the homework during class time. If he so forgets then the homework becomes a written piece of utter *&^%--unless my blessed sister reviews it herself (and that ain’t happenin’).

Of course—by no means if the homework was not done (that which I refer to as the simple mechanical task of doing and noting down) then that reviewing would have been &*^%.

Homework is therefore ‘essential’ for study to continue but by all means it does not mean that ‘homework is study’.

Moving away from my beloved narrow-minded sibling—and advancing the level of learning—we certainly do not continue to expect our dear teachers and professors to review our homework pieces for us—NO!

We are expected to do BOTH the “homework” and the “reviewing” (which involved solving the problematic areas concerned with the given homework also), the latter of which is essential if the former is supposed to work.

How many of us do homework without reviewing, do subjects without preparation, attend classes without recapping… so “homework” without “study”? I can assume roughly and quite accurately about 70%.

And THAT my friends, is where the magic of “homework” comes in and the subtle yet true reason it is only less that ¼ (quarter) of the study we do as students and probably the reason behind ½ (half) of us struggling and failing.