Post by maybe someday on Jul 21, 2011 12:44:13 GMT -6
Wow, I am so glad to find this board!
I started "homeschooling" in 1993, before it really became common in my state. My family was...walking wounded. My father was a recovering alcoholic and my mother a textbook enabler. We had had years of instability due to his drinking and its consequences; there were many moves, many new schools. Things were finally getting better financially, my brothers were grown, and my parents bought a house. And moved me again, in 5th grade. I was a gifted kid who had been in a pretty excellent public school, so to move to a poor rural area where the other kids' backgrounds were rough, to say the least, really traumatized me. And of course they all hated little white-bread smartypants me. Having had a pretty religious upbringing, I was totally innocent, and was suddenly spending my days with kids who at best, were crassly curious about sex, and at worst, had been sexually abused, made me perpetually upset. That and the constant social rejection resulted in my having diarrhea almost every day from September to December. So I can understand my mother's reasoning in pulling me out of that school. Charter schools weren't very widespread in those days, but I wish to God she'd put me in private or parochial school instead. But no, our "homeschooling" journey had begun.
The true "homeschooling" lasted only the rest of that year. I guess my mother realized she wasn't up to handling every subject. So there were correspondence schools of varying quality (and cost). I would get depressed every winter and sleep later and later, only to revive in the spring in the hopes of packing 9 months' work into 2 so I wouldn't end up working through the summer (never worked). Other than our church I had no social exposure, and even people there began to treat me differently, no doubt because I was still ten years old socially. I still have a hard time making eye contact, or remembering to ask people questions, not just ramble on.
My father occasionally threatened to send me back to public school, which stirred up the deep anxiety of that half-year in 5th grade. I was reading voraciously, seeking out all the marks of culture and wealth, from Shakespeare to opera to Evian water, I guess in hopes of achieving something beyond my dark little bedroom walls. We didn't have a computer (internet still being pretty young and all), and I was more or less on track until my junior year, when we got satellite TV and a puppy, and I worked so little that June 2001, when I would have graduated had I stayed in school, came and went and I still had a full year of biology to do. I somehow talked my way into a part-time retail job and got a car and a post office box. I hid my lack of progress from my mother, and when my diploma came in April 2002, she chalked it up to the correspondence school's slow paperwork.
The retail gig became full-time, and I hated life so very much. "Homeschooling" had not prepared me for dealing with a--holes on a daily basis. Actually, it was hard even to be on my feet that long. I wasn't overweight, but I hadn't had much physical activity in 8 years. So at 19, I took the SATs and applied to a big university. And miraculously, I got 790/590, and they let me in.
Happy ending? Hardly. I had no friends, lived alone, and worked side jobs every waking moment. I hadn't exactly learned how to study, in all those years of "homeschool." In fact, I had become quite good at cheating, or at least cutting corners, in all those correspondence school worksheets and tests. I was attending a liberal arts college, but I didn't know how to write a paper. I didn't know how to think analytically or make an argument. I had been trained to find the "right" answers and parrot them back, and I didn't understand how in some situations that might be construed as plagiarism. It's only by the beneficence of professors who felt sorry for me (or just wanted to hold onto one of the few majors in the unusual subject that I was pursuing) that I wasn't flunked or thrown out. I graduated and got a job at an Ivy League university and moved away.
Happy ending now? Nope. I didn't know how to make or keep friends, let alone live with roommates and date big-city man-children. And because I'd had no opportunities to find scholarships for college, and no real experience with money, I had huge student loan and credit card debts. So a guy that I hadn't ever really wanted to go out with, but didn't know how to say no to, became my long-term, abusive boyfriend. He was the first person in many years whom I'd told that about my "homeschooling" and he used that information to cut me off at the knees and destroy my confidence, every time I'd get a little bit stronger. That wasn't the only weapon in his arsenal, but it was one of the primary ones.
My employer paid for me to pursue a master's degree, but after 4 years, I was emotionally and financially bankrupt, and I still haven't done my thesis (only thing left to do). My hair was falling out.
So in October 2009, I got out of the relationship. The following January I met a wonderful man, whom I just married six weeks ago. (He knows that I was "homeschooled" for part of my education, but doesn't know gory details.) We moved back to my home state and I'm now working at my alma mater, actually working for one of the professors who cut me a break without really knowing what was wrong with me--and she still doesn't know I was "homeschooled." (My correspondence school's name doesn't sound like what it is.)
It's so hard to focus sometimes, hard to do tasks that I don't like, hard to deal with people that don't see things the way I do. I'm still secretive, sometimes for no reason at all. Other than my husband, I don't really have any close friends. I feel the most profound sense of loss when I see some 90s pop culture thing that I wasn't a part of--I really wish I'd had a chance to be young. (I don't normally talk about any of these things, so it's quite liberating to write this. )
I am slowly building a life, but it's hard not to be angry when EVERY ASPECT of my life was made immeasurably harder by "homeschooling." As others have said, it's hard not to think "what might have been" on a level playing field. It's hard to forgive your parents for stacking the deck against you because of their own unresolved issues and need for control. But everything fades in time, I guess.
Thank you for reading. This was way too long. Love to you all!
I started "homeschooling" in 1993, before it really became common in my state. My family was...walking wounded. My father was a recovering alcoholic and my mother a textbook enabler. We had had years of instability due to his drinking and its consequences; there were many moves, many new schools. Things were finally getting better financially, my brothers were grown, and my parents bought a house. And moved me again, in 5th grade. I was a gifted kid who had been in a pretty excellent public school, so to move to a poor rural area where the other kids' backgrounds were rough, to say the least, really traumatized me. And of course they all hated little white-bread smartypants me. Having had a pretty religious upbringing, I was totally innocent, and was suddenly spending my days with kids who at best, were crassly curious about sex, and at worst, had been sexually abused, made me perpetually upset. That and the constant social rejection resulted in my having diarrhea almost every day from September to December. So I can understand my mother's reasoning in pulling me out of that school. Charter schools weren't very widespread in those days, but I wish to God she'd put me in private or parochial school instead. But no, our "homeschooling" journey had begun.
The true "homeschooling" lasted only the rest of that year. I guess my mother realized she wasn't up to handling every subject. So there were correspondence schools of varying quality (and cost). I would get depressed every winter and sleep later and later, only to revive in the spring in the hopes of packing 9 months' work into 2 so I wouldn't end up working through the summer (never worked). Other than our church I had no social exposure, and even people there began to treat me differently, no doubt because I was still ten years old socially. I still have a hard time making eye contact, or remembering to ask people questions, not just ramble on.
My father occasionally threatened to send me back to public school, which stirred up the deep anxiety of that half-year in 5th grade. I was reading voraciously, seeking out all the marks of culture and wealth, from Shakespeare to opera to Evian water, I guess in hopes of achieving something beyond my dark little bedroom walls. We didn't have a computer (internet still being pretty young and all), and I was more or less on track until my junior year, when we got satellite TV and a puppy, and I worked so little that June 2001, when I would have graduated had I stayed in school, came and went and I still had a full year of biology to do. I somehow talked my way into a part-time retail job and got a car and a post office box. I hid my lack of progress from my mother, and when my diploma came in April 2002, she chalked it up to the correspondence school's slow paperwork.
The retail gig became full-time, and I hated life so very much. "Homeschooling" had not prepared me for dealing with a--holes on a daily basis. Actually, it was hard even to be on my feet that long. I wasn't overweight, but I hadn't had much physical activity in 8 years. So at 19, I took the SATs and applied to a big university. And miraculously, I got 790/590, and they let me in.
Happy ending? Hardly. I had no friends, lived alone, and worked side jobs every waking moment. I hadn't exactly learned how to study, in all those years of "homeschool." In fact, I had become quite good at cheating, or at least cutting corners, in all those correspondence school worksheets and tests. I was attending a liberal arts college, but I didn't know how to write a paper. I didn't know how to think analytically or make an argument. I had been trained to find the "right" answers and parrot them back, and I didn't understand how in some situations that might be construed as plagiarism. It's only by the beneficence of professors who felt sorry for me (or just wanted to hold onto one of the few majors in the unusual subject that I was pursuing) that I wasn't flunked or thrown out. I graduated and got a job at an Ivy League university and moved away.
Happy ending now? Nope. I didn't know how to make or keep friends, let alone live with roommates and date big-city man-children. And because I'd had no opportunities to find scholarships for college, and no real experience with money, I had huge student loan and credit card debts. So a guy that I hadn't ever really wanted to go out with, but didn't know how to say no to, became my long-term, abusive boyfriend. He was the first person in many years whom I'd told that about my "homeschooling" and he used that information to cut me off at the knees and destroy my confidence, every time I'd get a little bit stronger. That wasn't the only weapon in his arsenal, but it was one of the primary ones.
My employer paid for me to pursue a master's degree, but after 4 years, I was emotionally and financially bankrupt, and I still haven't done my thesis (only thing left to do). My hair was falling out.
So in October 2009, I got out of the relationship. The following January I met a wonderful man, whom I just married six weeks ago. (He knows that I was "homeschooled" for part of my education, but doesn't know gory details.) We moved back to my home state and I'm now working at my alma mater, actually working for one of the professors who cut me a break without really knowing what was wrong with me--and she still doesn't know I was "homeschooled." (My correspondence school's name doesn't sound like what it is.)
It's so hard to focus sometimes, hard to do tasks that I don't like, hard to deal with people that don't see things the way I do. I'm still secretive, sometimes for no reason at all. Other than my husband, I don't really have any close friends. I feel the most profound sense of loss when I see some 90s pop culture thing that I wasn't a part of--I really wish I'd had a chance to be young. (I don't normally talk about any of these things, so it's quite liberating to write this. )
I am slowly building a life, but it's hard not to be angry when EVERY ASPECT of my life was made immeasurably harder by "homeschooling." As others have said, it's hard not to think "what might have been" on a level playing field. It's hard to forgive your parents for stacking the deck against you because of their own unresolved issues and need for control. But everything fades in time, I guess.
Thank you for reading. This was way too long. Love to you all!