Why do we do our homework in elementary school? We aren’t really being graded on it. No letter is sent home to our parents. It either gets done or doesn’t. This is a persons first opportunity to develop a work ethic but most people do not. The pressure to do work we aren’t penalized for missing comes from our parents. The issue is that if we start relying on outside pressure to do work we do not develop intrinsic motivation. Without intrinsic motivation students will struggle when they have to do work without someone on them to do it. Whether this support ends in middle school or college there are two choices, drown in missing work or start building up good habits. During remote learning there were few teachers holding us accountable, just turning in work got you a good grade because we were all going through a shared trauma and not getting the best education possible. It was a result of the situation no one is at fault for it but a work ethic and stamina I had built up from 6th to 8th grade was starting to slip away. I lost my routine and with it the habits that made me successful. When we came back from online learning it was a big adjustment. The socializing with the work load was overwhelming and I saw my GPA start to drop. I tried Quizlet to study for tests, I watched Youtube videos but the online resources weren’t helping me. I was 15 and coming off of a year inside I didn’t know how to function in a new school without the support of teachers reminding me to do my work. So I went to office hours and set time for myself everyday to work. Something I did whenever I got an assignment was to divide it into pieces. If it was a 2 page essay due on a Friday and its due Monday I would have day 1 be for making an outline, day 2 for finding evidence, day 3 for writing page one, day 4 for writing page 2, and day 5 for edits. I wanted to be as efficient with my time as possible so instead of giving myself a to do list I gave myself a to do list and a timer. I would get home set a timer for 90 minutes and put my phone out of reach. Then for those 90 minutes I would get as much done as I could. At first this was hard to stick to, I would get distracted, so I started rewarding myself. It sounds pavlovian but it helped me to develop good study habits. If I completed everything on my to do list well I would get a coffee or a treat for myself before school the next day. After a few months I stopped needing the incentive and became self motivated. It takes time to develop study habits, the best piece of advice I can give is to be consistent, effortful, patient, and kind to yourself.