Trials of a homeschooler

Originally posted to Xanga on December 10, 2007

I finally feel like I have missed something!! No, wait, let me explain.

I am home-schooled. For me this entails the following routine: I wake up, I shower, I practice the piano, I check Facebook (on which most of my friends are home-schooled), I do some school, I go to the library where I do more school or read lame novels, I go back home and do more school, I check Facebook, I go to shooting club, I come home and watch a movie with my sister. Once a week I go to "school" or classes with other homeschoolers, once a week I go to church and youth group, and once a week I go places like the library, shooting club, and shopping. This is my life, m'kay. (Don't mourn for me; it's great.)

I really love it. I do school on my own terms, when I want to, spending as much time as I need on subjects I don't understand, and I get to highlight the subjects I like. (I like to think my education in English is far superior to that of one's average public high schooler.) I have the most awesome friends in the world, between forensics competition, the kids I've grown up with, they're all the sweetest people. I have a wonderful life, and I hear nothing but horrors about public education. Even pragmatically, it seems to be a less-than-effective way to educate kids. But I have finally found something I miss about not going to school.


There are so many different people out there! So far, I've only ever met people who are more or less like me. I've never had a job, I live in a pretty average town, I've never been exposed to much diversity. And I'm not talking liberal dead-horse diversity, either. I mean diversity of interests and personalities, ways of life. People are so different! And I want to get to know them all - the liberals and the conservatives, the goths and the punks, the musicians and the mathematicians, the ambitious and the shy . . . I want to know what they like, why they like it, and I want to learn from them. And I can't do that stuck in my house, now can I?

Should I go to school? What do you think about public education? What do you think about home-schooling? Is my view of people's diversity a little too rosy?