Mixed Feelings on a Non-Conventional Childhood

Learning to love being a weird little homeschool kid

“Hey Mom, I’m done with my reading... I wanna go outside and do my math homework.” 

When you don’t go to school, you get to choose a new desk every day. The world was my classroom, and the cherry tree adjacent to the patio was my favorite seat in class. I’d climb nimbly up the low, smooth branch that defied gravity just above the plush grass and blooming hydrangeas to sit and study. The little nooks near the trunk offered a small body a place to relax with a good book, or in my case, an Algebra I textbook. 

As a homeschooled kid, I feel that I missed out on this larger, socially shared experience of education that most of my peers in the United States went through. There’s a shared camaraderie in public education that, from the outside looking in, feels appealing. 

I could have thrived in a traditional school environment. I loved structure and was traditionally “good in school”. I knew how to sit still, memorize content, and ace quizzes and tests when I wanted to. Learning came easy. 

Growing up in a small lake town in Northern Michigan, the outdoors was my babysitter.  “You’re telling me you’re bored?!” Mom would lift an eyebrow. “Go play outside or you can wash the windows in the dining room.” We didn’t have TV. We took family road trips to The Badlands of South Dakota and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s homestead, not Disneyland or Mall of America. 

I’d sit at the kitchen table, flipping enviously through the pages of back-to-school magazines. I wanted a preppy little school uniform, a pleated skirt, and little white socks. The glossy centerfold in Teen Vogue showed fuzzy hot pink binder covers and the 10 best ways to personalize your school locker with jelly stickers and magnets— a locker I didn’t have. Sometimes I craved the normality of what I saw around me. Plushy white Wonder Bread that you could simply grab off the shelf looked like a treat, as I ate my PB&J made with whole wheat bread that my mom baked with flour that she ground herself. How embarrassing!  

Home education can look like absolutely anything. You hear the spectrum of experiences— from families who let their kids watch TV all day, expert one-on-one personal tutors hired for each child, to my friends who would sit at orderly little desks at their in-home classroom. I think they even had a bell.  

My earliest memories of “school” involve reading. Lots of reading. Every morning I curled up on the couch with my mom and brothers. Mom would read to us from The Bible, the story of Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel, or biographies of early American presidents and politicians. 

With a strong network of other homeschool families, many of my childhood friends were also learning at home. I loved my freedom and drank the Kool-Aid of the value of home education. I saw friends in public school spending 8 hours a day in class and then coming home to do more homework, and that did not appeal to me. My days were often at my disposal after I completed my lessons and reading. I’d front-load my school days with my more formal curriculum so I could finish early, and then spend the rest of the afternoon working on little creative projects or playing outside. 

Spending so much time at home, I leaned into my inner creative introvert. I’d wander around in the woods collecting moss and picking ferns, making intricate little scenes with toy animals. Many of my core memories of playing outside and doing little projects around our 10-acre property. We learned to ski before we could walk, picked tomatoes, and built precarious tree forts with the neighbor kids. 

As I got older, learning took me outside the home more often. Chemistry tutors, co-op Latin classes with other homeschool kids, drama club, swim team, and dual enrolling in college classes at a local university brought structure to my days.

Before you think this was all Little House on the Prairie, private tutors, and raw milk, let me clarify: Growing up in a rural area with two parents who valued Hard Work above everything besides God and Family means you are earning your room and board. 

We worked a lot. A wood-burning stove in a Northern Michigan winter burns a lot of wood to keep a family of five cozy. When your dad has a home construction business, there are a lot of trees that seem to be falling and need to be split into pretty little bundles of firewood. I quickly learned that if I offered to cook dinner I could get out of chopping and stacking wood, garden chores, and washing dishes. I still love to cook.

My childhood fantasy of horseback riding through the woods manifested one Christmas, along with all the responsibility of owning a four-legged hay burner. My gift that year (even before the promise of the steed itself) was a mucking rake, John Deere Green, nestled behind the Christmas tree with a big red bow and a smirk from my parents. 

As I got older, my growing dreams of travel and adventure started to feel more real. They also needed to be financed. Finding a job seemed to be my best bet in exploring places outside our town of three thousand residents. 

My earliest business venture was learning to plant gourds and pumpkins and then selling them on the side of the road come harvest season. I perfected my latte art as a barista at a local ski resort and waited Sunday brunch tables for persnickety old ladies who tipped me a generous five percent if the eggs were poached to perfection. My least favorite job was gardening. I suffered through it for the $20 an hour cash rate that made it worth the mind-numbing task of of pulling weeds and snapping the brown, dry tops off dead daisies. I went on to start a wedding and portrait photography business, even selling work at a local gallery.

I felt the responsibility for my path in life from a young age, but also the love and support of my parents to take risks and explore interests that didn’t look like the traditional route of higher education. My dad learned the art of fine homebuilding from his dad and never went to college. My mom also didn’t pursue a college education. They both encouraged my brothers and me to follow our interests– whether they included higher education or not. 

My parents fully supported my decision to take a gap year and move to rural Mexico to work at an orphanage after graduation. They also encouraged me to take a job as a Personal Assistant on the Upper East Side of New York City the following year. Although when I had enough of The Devil Wears Prada experience my life choices were put to test in a heated debate with my dad. Somehow he was concerned about my moving into a windowless room in Brooklyn and taking an unpaid internship at a tech startup. There was no agreement in the end. I told him I was going and I didn’t care if he liked it or not. Despite the tension, there was still love. My dad came out regularly to New York and loved striking up conversations with strangers on the train like the curious, kind, small business owner he was.  

I felt a little like an outsider growing up. Sometimes I liked it, other times I didn’t. Regardless, I think it gave me a delight in being a tad left of center. Homeschooling is a little weird, a little different. Especially when as a kid, the Typical American Childhood portrayed in media doesn’t look anything like your life.

There were moments of doubt, lots of them. The only reason I took a gap year was because I was able to power through my last couple years of high school and graduate at 16. I didn’t want to stay in our small town and marry my childhood sweetheart. I wanted to go to college, find a career, and travel. That year gave me an emotional safety blanket. I knew that I could start college the following year without feeling like I was going to “fall behind” my peers. 

As write this now, I’m on sabbatical after 10 years of working in design consulting and tech startups. I’m choosing library books over watching the latest TV shows of my own volition. Desperate enough for good bread that I’m considering making it myself, like my mom did. I still haven’t been to Disneyland, but I do now love the satisfying feeling of working hard.

I have a deeper appreciation for the nonconventional education and small-town life that were pivotal parts of shaping who I am today. Most importantly, I think my early education gave me the courage to take risks and embrace being a little different—a feeling I've come to love.