How to Do Your Homework
If you’re reading this, odds are you’re supposed to be doing something else. Look, it’s not your fault. Algebra is boring; random articles on the Internet are infinitely more appealing. Here’s a handy step-by-step guide to doing your homework.
1. Sit down and carefully arrange your study supplies.
2. Recognize that the aforementioned step was incredibly strenuous. Take a forty-five minute break.
3. Put on some music so you never have to be alone with your thoughts.
4. Open your laptop. Go on the Internet and check your various social feeds.
5. Close your laptop. The Internet is distracting. Immediately get out your phone and go back on the Internet.
6. Post a picture on Instagram of your study area. Caption it “#studymode #nonstopstudying #studyallthetime.”
7. Go on a YouTube binge that begins with wedding flash mobs and somehow ends with Sonic the Hedgehog conspiracy theories.
8. Check your grades. Calculate how poorly you can do on this assignment and still get an A.
9. Calculate how poorly you can do on this assignment and still get a B.
10. Succumb to the siren song of sweet temptation and rummage through your fridge for a snack you neither need nor want.
11. Discover that you have questions about the homework. Text a friend or classmate. When they don’t immediately respond, check their Facebook, Snap story, or Instagram to see what they could possibly be doing that’s so much more important than helping you understand the material. If they don’t appear to be busy, get mad. If they do appear to be busy, get mad anyway because they didn’t invite you.
12. Move all your study supplies to a new location. The problem isn’t you, it’s the venue.
13. Google the War of the Roses, right now. Why? Because you don’t know anything about the War of the Roses and you have 1.2 million terabytes of information at your fingertips, that’s why.
14. Divide your time into scheduling blocks. You’ll spend forty-five minutes on algebra, forty-five minutes on AP bio, and 1.5 hours on your English essay. This system only took you twenty-three minutes to come up with.
15. Paint your nails.
16. Eat a banana. You don’t eat enough bananas. You don’t know what constitutes “enough” bananas (or, indeed, how many bananas is too many bananas) but you’re reasonably sure you could use a banana right now.
17. Tweet about how much homework you have. Expect a surplus of likes and retweets and become extremely disappointed when this doesn’t happen.
18. Wonder about the extent to which online validation contributes to your overall happiness.
19. Let your many anxieties spiral out of control. Is there an afterlife? What if you never find love? Will the world end before you need to figure out how to do taxes?
20. Okay, that got a little heavy. Watch a twenty-two minute sitcom to come down from that emotional rollercoaster.
21. Make a to do list. Add a bunch of things you already did so you feel good about yourself.
22. You don’t have any clothes. Do a little online shopping.
23. It’s past midnight, somehow. Resolve to simply wake up early tomorrow and finish your homework then, knowing full and damn well you’ll come to regret this decision in the fullness of time.
