08 Sep 2026
Hey 🙂
Spencer’s heading into Senior Prep this year — the last stop before high school — and with it comes a gear shift: more subjects, more work, more homework.
On one of our date nights, I asked him how he was feeling about the year ahead. True to form, Spencer takes most things in his stride. But homework was the first thing he mentioned. He said he wasn’t worried about it, exactly — but I could tell it was sitting somewhere in the back of his mind.
That’s my cue. Not to reassure him it’ll be fine, but to ask him what he thinks the best approach might be, and then add a few ideas of my own.
So we sat down together and talked it through, and I ended up writing him this.
Dear Spencer,
You mentioned homework’s going to ramp up this year, and I could tell it was on your mind even though you said you weren’t worried. So I wanted to give you a few ideas — not because I think you need them, but because I think they’ll make the whole thing a little less heavy.
Here’s the truth: you’re going to be doing homework, in some form, for the next ten years at least. Maybe longer, if university’s in the picture. So really there’s only one decision to make — do you want to spend those ten years fighting it, or do you want to get good at it?
Because here’s the thing: homework is a skill. Same as guitar, same as rugby, same as golf. And you already know how skills work — you suck at them at first, it’s slow and a bit annoying, and then one day something clicks and it isn’t anymore. You’ve done that before. You’ll do it again.
A few things that might help:
1. It’s a choice. You can resist it and be annoyed by it, or you can accept it and figure out how to get really good at it. Nobody else can make that choice for you.
2. It’s learnable. Academic work isn’t a talent you either have or don’t — it’s a skill, and skills respond to practice.
3. An apple a day. A little bit of consistent homework beats cramming it all in before a deadline. Little and often wins.
4. Frantic or in control — pick one. Would you rather be behind and scrambling, or ahead and calm? Same amount of work either way. Very different experience.
5. Ask for help — early and often. And don’t just ask the people in the classroom. There are teachers all over the internet — YouTube’s full of people explaining things a hundred different ways. If one explanation doesn’t land, another one probably will. Do not struggle alone.
6. It stacks. What you learn this year is the foundation for next year, and the year after that. Nothing’s wasted.
And one more thing, because I know this one tripped me up: looking up the answer isn’t cheating. School is a place to learn, and to see how someone else got there is exactly how you figure out how to get there yourself. You can work back from the answer. The only time you can’t look up an answer is in an exam or a test. Cheating isn’t looking something up — cheating is pretending you did the work when you didn’t. Even when you look up the answer, you still have to do the work of understanding it.
Commit. Have the courage to be bad at it for a while. Build the capability. Earn the confidence.
Love,
Daddy
XxX
A month or so later he told me he’d been using the tips. He seemed light on his feet about the whole thing.
I think that’s what happens when you look at something through the lens of “this is a skill” rather than “this is a burden.” It stops being a fight and becomes just… a thing you’re learning to do. And he’s learned how to do things before. So I know he can do this.
🗣️ 👀
Chris.
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