Blog: What it’s Like Being Homeschooled.

I thought to save this post for when I actually started school, but yesterday, I looked around, saw how many people are returning back to school and thought, “Eh. Why not publish this post early?” I’ve talked a little bit about what being homeschooled is like last year in my post about the documentary Shiny, Happy People, so why not go a bit more into detail about why homeschooling is actually not as weird as people make it out to be.

One of the negative stereotypes about homeschoolers is that we’re all really lazy, sleep in until 10 a.m., don’t bother to change out of our pajamas, do maybe two subjects, then spend the rest of the day doing essentially nothing. While this may be the case for some people with really lax or inattentive parents, this is not the case for me. Ever since the first grade, I’ve been really good at getting my work done. Mom would wake me up around 8 a.m., I’d have breakfast, and I would start doing some of my workbooks. That continued until about noon, when I have lunch and have an hour-long break, then do my history and science reading and whatever workbooks I didn’t get to in the morning.

As I grew up, however, I became much more independent, especially as my workloads changed and I was able to understand more subjects without Mom’s help. Around the 3rd or 4th grade, I started getting up at 6 a.m. to get all of my reading done so I could get more done during the rest of the day. Once I hit middle school and electives became something that I had to do, I started waking up at 5 a.m. so I had even more time to spare for other things. I’ve stuck with this schedule ever since then and it works really well for me. I’m usually done with my reading and written work by 8 or 9 in the morning, have time to get dressed and eat, and all that’s left is for me to do is stuff that I have to do online, which might be learning a new language, writing an essay, taking a course on some elective that I chose, or running this blog and writing my books.

That’s right guys. This blog, which started out as a way to get some of my work out there on the Internet has also become an elective so I can get college credit. We count it as part of English, and I hope that you can see why. I’m basically writing an informal essay on here two or three times a week about whatever topic I want.

This type of learning not only teaches me about math, science, English, history, etc., but also teaches me how to manage my time well, something that isn’t taught very well in public schools since you’re working on their schedule, not your own. Being able to manage my own schedule also means that if I have the flexibility to move things around if I have something to do in the morning or later in the day. Or if I want to take a weekday off for whatever reason, I have the option of taking the work for that day and working on it throughout the rest of the week or getting it all done in my free time.

“But M.J.!” you might be thinking, “Doesn’t that seem kind of rushed? Won’t your grades be affected negatively? Don’t you get distracted?”

My answer to that question is “No.” I learn at my own pace, which is much more efficient than having to cram everything into an hour before rushing off to go to the next class. If my brother is being loud and annoying, I always have the option of going somewhere else to do my work, which – once again – is better than having to sit in a classroom with a bunch of people who could care less that you’re trying to work. This has had no negative affect on my work, and I have always scored higher than average on my standardized tests.

Another common misconception about homeschoolers is that we’re all very socially awkward and weird. While that’s somewhat true for me, that’s not true for all of us. In fact, most of the kids that I go to church with are homeschooled, but are very active in activities such sports, clubs, play groups, etc. and are pretty outgoing. I also think that something could be said for the parents. If both parents are socially awkward or just introverted, the kids are also most likely going to be that way. But hey, the introversion is better than running around thinking we’re some sort of animal with they/them pronouns.

The last misconception about homeschoolers that I want to address in this post is that we’re all religious nuts that don’t want to expose our kids to anything outside of XYZ religion. Though there are a lot of homeschoolers who are religious, not everyone homeschools because of their religion and most homeschoolers are exposed to a plethora of different ideas from very early on. While the parents do have a say in helping their kid along the road to figure out what they believe, the child is still allowed to look at the evidence themselves, think critically about it, and figure out what they believe from there, something that you’re not going to get a lot of in traditional schools.

And you’re allowed to speak your mind without being ridiculed and bullies by teachers and classmates, so it’s great for those of us who are super opinionated, like me.

Until next time,

M.J.