10th grade reflection: Son's point of view

Now we get to hear directly from the son of last week's homeschooling mom about why school was so miserable for him, and how homeschooling has changed his perspective on life. Enjoy part 2 of this story! (If you missed his Mom's point of view in part 1, you can read it here.)

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Entering the tenth grade was supposed to be a restart from the last year, in which I barely managed to pull through with less than stellar marks. But my public school career was completely unsalvageable by the second semester. Sometime around the end of seventh grade,  I began to lose interest in doing the assignments and projects the administration required everyone to complete for good grades. The assignments were unoriginal, tedious, and seemed, for the most part, unnecessary to normal life. While the actual subject matter was quite interesting to me, the excessive, unnecessary assignments ruined any hope of enjoying classes. Eventually I stopped doing the assignments flat out, partially to spite the authority the school had over the student body. My faltering grades lead to daily screaming matches with my family over what could possibly be wrong with me. I was failing half my classes by the end of the semester while my parents were freaking out about my future. I decided that leaving public school would be the best course of action, as I would not be forced to follow the same path as every other teenager, and could study whatever subject I wanted without the school’s overlords pressuring me to do only as they wished.

            The end of the first semester marked the end of my public school career. I could finally relax, learn what I wanted at my pace, and not worry about tests and projects failing my education. This second start with homeschooling felt like a breath of fresh air after my dreadful high school experience. I was homeschooled before entering public schools in the third grade, but this time it felt better. The first time I had no frame of reference to determine whether I enjoyed or not, so it felt much better to start homeschooling knowing how public schools worked and how unhealthy it could be. My previous experience with homeschooling may very well have helped lead me to the many problems I had with public schools and their authority. 

About a week or so after leaving school, I was much happier than I had been in a long time. Slowly I began to move away from the way public schools want students to think and started thinking of things I could do now that I wasn’t forced to do only certain things. Now I could finally study recent history instead of only the American Revolution, or read any book I could get my hands on, or learn the basics of Javascript on my computer. The world is opened up, and I can do with it as I wish.

~ Vincent, Colorado