Unit 3 Vocabulary Worksheet: Fill & Download for Free

School. School has changed since my parents went last (dad graduating in 1974), and not in the ways many would expect.My school has always been like most others in the United States, where you begin every weekday at 8:00 in the morning and stay until 3:30 in the afternoon. That's not what's so bad (other than the 8:00 AM part). What's bad is our classrooms and what goes on in them.I've been telling everyone for years that my teachers seem to think they are the only teachers that see us every day, because they give us homework like nothing else. Every teacher.In Geometry, our class gets homework every single day other than fridays regardless of a sport event, If that teacher is absent, or anything of the like. She still gives us homework 4 days of every 5. Then, the teacher I see the next period for English Honors piles on either a big chunk of a reading assignment or something related to vocabulary for that week. Then comes the worst class, U.S. History where our teacher wants to purposely fail us (as she has admitted) so that we can get better at these hard as nails tests when she doesn't even go over 95% of the information in them every 2 fridays. Then the next class gives us a little more homework about 3 out of every 5 days… but then last period of the day, what I thought would be my favorite class of the year (big science nerd here), turned out to be a big homework fest. It's chemistry. Something I've always enjoyed until actually taking the class. Right now we are going over moles, and she gives us 3 page long worksheets to work on, won't explain the instructions (she only gives us what's on the paper), and tells us to work on, usually no one finishes by the end of that period, so we all have homework from that class.What I really wish would change is that in my one free period, right after lunch when I try to get everything I need to done, most of my teachers find some way to bother me and stop me from getting that stuff done. Just like yesterday, I was working on finishing an English reading assignment in this period when my Chemistry teacher came in and told me “You better get going on your chemistry homework, it's due today! If you don't have it that's points off!” And, yes, I know it was due, and hadn't finished it, but English was before that class and I wanted to finish what was due first, first.I hope this is a good answer. I felt compelled to. Also, some more things I see in school can be found in this amazing video on Facebook: Suing the school system

I was at Gunn from 2006 to 2010. It's been a while and a lot of it was a haze even while I was there, but I think I can get some ballpark estimates that make sense. I'll estimate the average weekly load in each class then sum them up and do some rounding.I'd say I was in the top 10 percentile of students in terms of schedule difficulty (but not grades). I didn't feel pressure from the administration to take such a tough workload—they actually strongly discouraged it. I did feel pressure socially but it was mostly in a friendly, non-competitive way. Without a doubt though the primary drivers were that I enjoyed being challenged, never chose a particular area to focus on, and was very bored in easy classes.My "unweighted GPA" (A=4, B=3, C=2, D=1, F=0) was around 3.7 or 3.8. I tended to get Bs in my harder math and science classes and As in everything else.On top of these estimates there was a lot of time spent studying for the SATs and I had a couple jobs (writing online for about a year and working at a startup for a few months). I also devoted 10 hours per week on average during my sophomore and junior years organizing events and running my chapter of AZA, a Jewish high school fraternity / youth group.There was huge day-to-day and week-to-week variance on these. In project heavy classes like French, I'd often devote 10 hours on a project on a single Sunday once a month and that'd make up half the work I was really doing for the class for that month. Math and science (especially Physics) classes generally had significant work 4 nights a week plus cramming for difficult exams every couple weeks. English, history, and French classes had frequent reading to keep up with but most of the work was essays and projects every couple weeks. Those classes usually had easy exams (or none at all).Freshman Year: 30 hours per weekGeometry / Algebra 2A: This was the most advanced math class you could take without skipping out. (The same applies for the rest of the math classes below.) Homeworks probably took 30–60 minutes and I think we had 4 per week. Plus regular exams which required plenty of studying. Let's call it 6 hours per week. The "A" stood for Advanced I think.Biology 1AC: This was the most advanced science class you could take. I don't remember how much work this was too well. Lots of general reading and studying to do, things like memorizing the names of bones, then general worksheet-style homeworks and lab reports. Let's call it 5 hours per week. The "AC" stood for accelerated.French 2: We had short assignments most nights that took less than 30 minutes plus frequent exams that required a lot of vocabulary and grammar memorization. We also had occasional easy essay assignments plus big video projects which took 10+ hours. Let's call the weekly average 5 hours.Criminal and Civil Law, Living Skills: Two one-semester classes. Each had an average of 2 hours per week of homework. Memorizing things or short assignments and reading.English: Two semester-long classes, Contemporary Heritage and Literary Style. We read ~4 books each semester I think, had an hour or two of weekly short writing assignments, regular vocab to study (1 hour per week), and a long-form essay (10 hours of work) every ~4 weeks. If we say it takes 15 hours to read a book in depth and there were 16 weeks in a semester, that gives (15*4 + 1.5*16+1*16+10*4)/16 = 8.75 hours. That seems kind of high though so let's say 7 hours per week :). Most students don't really do the reading though.World History: This was the standard history class. We had a lot of reading, silly worksheet homework, memorization, projects, essays, and so on. Let's say 5 hours per week.PE (Physical Education): No meaningful out-of-class work. During about 3 months I didn't have to go to this at all because I was on the Track and Field team.I also took an out-of-school Hebrew course that gave me official credit. That was 3 hours of class time plus an hour of class. I won't include that in the total this time since it was extra.Sophomore Year: 30 hours per weekEnglish: Same as freshman year if you were doing the reading. One of my semesters was particularly light and didn't have much reading so let's call this 5 hours per week though.French 3: Same, 5 hours per week.Trigonometry / Analytic Geometry Honors: For me at least this was much harder than the freshman class. I really struggled during some parts. Let's call it 7 hours per week.Chemistry: I started out in the Honors track for ~2 months and it was a crazy amount of work I couldn't keep up with. I switched to the regular track one and did an average of 3 hours per week at most. The regular track class was excruciatingly dumbed down and made me want to avoid lower track classes.Contemporary World History / US Government: These were easier than the freshman year history classes. Let's say 4 hours per week on average. (There were essays and projects that took 10–15 hours every couple weeks but fewer daily or weekly assignments.)PE: Nothing meaningful stillHebrew: This year I used the Hebrew class in place of one of my electives so let's count the 4 hours per week I spent.Junior Year: 50/45 hours per week (first/second semester)This was by far the toughest year at Gunn for me and most of my classmates. On top of this I spent a ton of time studying for the main SATs and the subject tests. Since I took mainly AP classes where the climax was in early May, the last month was practically a vacation. I was taking 5 classes at Gunn (plus the Hebrew class) so I set my schedule up such that I was only at school from 8am to 12:30pm.English Honors: I had "American Classics Honors" for a semester. We read some good books but the teacher was really terrible and assigned a terrifying amount of menial work. This was easily 12 hours per week, probably more for students who actually read all the books. The other semester I took "Film as Composition and Literature" class though and that had almost no work, maybe 2 hours per week outside of class.Analysis Honors: This was a pretty intense precalculus and general math class. 7 hours per week.AP Computer Science: The first semester was really tough for me since I hadn't taken the prereqs for the class and we were doing work based on the UC Berkeley curriculum (http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/). I probably spent 5 hours per week outside of class but most people spent less. The second semester wasn't really as bad, let's say 3 hours.AP Physics B: Lots of long lab reports, tons of exams and quizzes, regular homework. 7 hours per week.AP Statistics: I found this class really easy. Average 5 hours per week, driven up by big projects we had every month or two.AP United States History: Honestly, I didn't do most of the assigned reading in this class. I still easily spent 10 hours per week on it for just the core textbook reading, essays, and homework. Maybe more.Hebrew: 4 hours again.AP Studying: Let's add another 7 hours/week during second semester for out-of-class studying for the corresponding AP tests.Also many, many hours of SAT studying but I won't include that.Senior Year: 45 hours per weekSame situation as junior year where the last month was very easy because AP test are in early May. (Doubly so given the excitement of graduation coming up.) I was taking 5 classes at Gunn (plus the Hebrew class) so I was able to set my schedule up such that I was only at school from 8am to 12:30pm.AP Art History: 15 hours per week. Genuinely insane amount of workbook homework and memorization.AP Economics: 3 hours per week. We didn't really have homework so this was just studying for exams.AP English: 12 hours per week. Lots of reading and frequent essays.AP Physics C: 6 hours per week. A few problem sets every week that took about an hour, plus studying for exams. I don't remember having long lab reports really.BC Calculus AP: 5 hours per week. This wasn't all that hard. I probably should have studied more though.Hebrew: 3 hours per week since I definitely wasn't doing out-of-class work at this point.Also tons of work on college applications in the fall (though I did a ton of this over winter break in December) and on AP tests in the spring, though they didn't feel too important since I'd already gotten into college (and the college didn't really care how well I did).

I’ll go from last year because my courseload is pretty light this year (I’m a senior), at least concerning homework.AP English Language: Reading a chapter and questions/extended response each week, as well as a current event or practice AP essay.Music History (Dual Enrollment): This teacher hated grading so he only assigned a vocabulary sheet for every unit.AP Physics 1 and 2: 3/5 nights a week there would often be a worksheet or page from a packet or textbook questions. More self studying expected than assigned homeworkPre-Calc BC (prep class leading to AP Calc BC): ~2 worksheets a night, expected to upload to hand in.French 4Acc Pre-AP: 3–4 packet pages per night (aka 5–6 exercises), sometimes a listening exercise or video.Physical Education: Usually no homework but sophomores have a classroom portion where they learn about personal training and how to exercise and the like, usually a project or powerpoint of some sort due about once a month or less.AP US History: 2–3 chapter outlines due per week. Closer to the exam, a practice exam due as well. The most homework heavy class I had junior year.Band: No homework really except expected practicing if you didn’t know your part, memorizing marching band music, etc.As a senior, my homework load is significantly lighter. Most of my classes rarely assign homework (eg Health, Chorus, Band, AP CompSci Principles.) I have a worksheet or two for AP Calc AB each night and a take home test every two weeks or so. My dual enrollment film studies class serves as my English class, and I just need to take notes on every chapter in preparation for the open notes chapter quizzes every two or three weeks and occasionally finish an essay we started in class. AP Macroeconomics assigns 10–15 chapter questions and a current event due on the day of the test, and AP Gov is really just expected that you finish the classwork (we’ve been so busy talking about the election that we’re very behind with the curriculum). I’ve since dropped the class, but AP French was my most homework heavy class, with several worksheets, research notes, textbook exercises, and/or listening activities each night, on top of regular studying needed to keep up. Each night there were at least 4 things assigned for homework, usually 5 or 6. I couldn’t handle the workload on top of my other activities (as an intended music major, I practice at least 3 hours a day, on top of after-school music activities and out of school lessons and rehearsals.) so I switched to College French (dual enrollment) with roughly half the homework load.