Homeschoolers

I thought I'd meet other former homsechoolers at college, especially at a somewhat rural college like this, but so far I have not met a single one. It's a little sad but also cool because now I can feel like I have my own little minority (being a part of a minority is underrated. We get to have exclusive parties! ...I'm so alone). The more I learn about public schooling in my classes, the more amazed I am at what homeschooling actually meant for me. It meant not only that I got to have an education that was fairy tailored to my learning style, but also that, essentially, I was exempt from all standardized testing. In public schools, the MAP test is like the most important thing for a teacher to keep in mind when she's teaching. At the end of every schoolyear (sometimes multiple times throughout the schoolyear), children are given a state standard test that determines how well they as individuals, as a class, and as a school have learned the target material. It's like the ACT, only every single year. Because the government puts such importance on these sorts of tests, the fact that homeschoolers usually don't have to take part in them is really incredible. It either demonstrates that the government doesn't care about homeschoolers as long as their parents are still paying the property tax that goes to the schools, or the government has massive faith that homeschoolers don't need that yearly assessment because they're likely to succeed anyway, whether they take it or not.

It's cool that homeschooling is allowed, even though sometimes the social repercussions on individuals are a real pity. I think I'm going to make a video about it soon.

I am wearing the shirt you made me today. I had to put on a big cardigan because it's so cold, so I haven't gotten any remarks on it yet, but I'm still hopeful for the future. If I can't find the homeschoolers, I'm going to find the nerds, because we have challenged social skills in common.

I was just in Educational Psychology (I wrote a 4-page paper for it last night, and I must have been half-asleep for a lot of it, because when I went to print it this morning I had the wrong class name, teacher name, and title at the top... good thing I caught it in time), and when the teacher was talking about cultural circles he used an example from Google+, then said "who in here is actually on Google+?" and I was the only person to raise my hand. Seriously? I thought college students were the ones to pioneer trendy new social networking sites! I guess I was wrong.

-Amy