Three sport athlete, IB student, no easy electives. It’s unfair, why does he have to get all of this homework? He should have less because he is an athlete. Tons of student athletes share this mentality. Well guess what? You chose this lifestyle; get over it.

Some student athletes have proposed the plan of getting less homework. Excelling in both athletics and academics is difficult to do, but they should not be given less work. These student athletes have gone to extremes to make this happen, even creating a petition on Twitter.

These extremes do not need to be taken for something that you knew you were taking on.

If you play any type of sport, you chose to take that on. You knew that you would have to take on the challenge of playing sports with school. The key word in “student athlete” is student. Choosing to participate in an extracurricular activity does not make you exempt of any work that everyone else has to do.

By the logic of some of the student athletes, everyone in an extracurricular activity should be exempt from doing their homework. Athletes aren’t the only ones who put in time into activities after school.

The athletes are only looking at their side. They fail to see the bigger picture.

Would the students who are cut from the team, play a sport outside of school, or have a medical condition which prevents them from playing a sport be left out of this or exempt from some homework?

Not only would it exclude the non-athletic and injured, but would provide a huge issue for colleges.

Colleges would look at an athlete’s transcript and see the good grades, but may not realize they didn’t work as hard as non-athletes. They may know the athlete just skated by doing half the work. The reason sports look good on a college application is because you’re doing more. If you do half of the work you really aren’t doing much more.

Not only would colleges not be impressed, their grades may be looked down upon too, even with straight A’s.

Student athletes should want to do just as much work as the other students, especially if they aren’t the best athlete. The reduced amount of work would bring down the value of their grades and would prevent that student from potentially getting into a college they would be accepted into if they did the regular amount of work.

This “reduced homework for athletes” idea just makes anyone who supports it look lazy.