I’m certain 6th grade is just as awful

God, I hate homework. I thought I was all done with that nonsense when I got out of college. Turns out, no.

Once you have kids, homework starts all over again. This time-joy of joys-you get to start from the beginning. When your kid brings home a tough assignment you wonder to yourself, was I doing this work in 3rd grade, 5th grade, 8th grade-whatever? I am sure we were, but I don’t want to do it again.

Today, my 5th grader-10-years old-was give the assignment to write a full-page essay on Nationalism and why people develop it after a war.

So we discussed Nationalism. We discussed it a lot. Then she discussed it with her father. Where she got stuck was the fact that she had to write an entire page about it. I told her to use lots of words, but really I don’t know if I could fill an entire page about Nationalism and I’m a professional bullshitter. I have to write 55,000 of them by May 15th.

It turns out, I don’t like 5th grade. I don’t even remember that I was especially fond of it the first time around.