From Homeschool to College

Socialized but Sheltered: Emily DeFreitas’s Story

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Socialized but sheltered is the phrase I’d use to describe my state when I entered college.

I knew how to communicate with people. I had enough social skills to get by, but I had been so underexposed to new people and ideas that I would be shocked and confused quite a bit during my first year.

Academically, my transition into college went smoothly. I had gotten a real high school diploma and transcripts through NARHS; I also took college level courses at my local community college as a high school senior. I highly recommend both of those things to anyone homeschooling for high school. Because of them, I had no homeschooling-related issues with the admissions process, and had a pretty good understanding of what a college class was like, having taken a few.

The main things I hadn’t experienced were living away from my parents for an extended period of time and encountering religious and political diversity on a regular basis.

I chose to study creative writing and English at Widener University, a private college near Philadelphia with no religious affiliation and a pretty diverse student body. School was a good hour and a half from home, so I lived on campus for all four years. My transition to life on campus was definitely aided somewhat by my parents. They literally insisted that I stay at school for a full month before even thinking about coming home for a weekend. That set me up for success because I didn’t have the option to chicken out and go home if homesickness decided to rear its ugly head. There was only one instance in which it did, several months into my freshman year, but I’ll get to that later.

While I was homeschooled (for every grade except 9th), most of my friends were Catholic, like me. I met them at church, or through Catholic homeschooling co-ops. My friends who weren’t Catholic were conservative Christians, often also homeschoolers. I was severely underexposed to liberal ideas, so much so that in college when I stated my conservative opinions I was shocked to discover that many of my peers didn’t share those views. I was much more right wing than I thought I was. (I thought of myself as a middle-of-the-road independent at that time because I supported marriage equality.)

In fact, in spite of my own support of marriage equality, I quickly discovered how uncomfortable I was when other people voiced their support of the issue. One student wanted to do a poster about the issue for Constitution Day, and posted it to a message board for a program I was in. I was a bit shocked. Could she do that? Wasn’t a topic like that taboo? If I remember correctly, she wanted to create a display that would start dialogue on the issue, which is a great idea for a college setting. Why was I uncomfortable? It wasn’t that I didn’t want people to agree (or even disagree) with me. The main issue, I soon realized, was that I had never met so many socially liberal people before.

I was uncomfortable because I had no idea what was normal for these people. What were their expectations of me?

Because of the lack of political diversity I had been exposed to, I spent my freshman year pretty much completely unable to figure out when it was socially acceptable to bring up politics. I had never developed the sensibility to choose a different topic even for the sake of a peaceful lunch with my friends. Worse, I was grossly misinformed on several issues, and was often surprised to get into an argument with a peer and have him or her refute my claims easily. The issue that caused me the most social woes was definitely the issue of abortion.

At home, I had been taught that I was part of a “pro-life generation,” meaning that young people were supposedly becoming increasingly pro-life. Having attended the March for Life in Washington D.C. twice, and been president of a pro-life organization during my high school years, abortion was my favorite political issue. I mistakenly thought that making pro-life statements among people I had just met would garner at least partial support from most of my peers. I would bring it up all the time—in the dormitory, or in the dining hall at the tables my friends and I would push together to accommodate everyone we had just met. I would get into loud arguments with people I had only met the day before. I was literally just trying to find a friend with whom I could share a common hatred of what I perceived as baby killing.

Ultimately I found people with a variety of opinions on the issue, and the vast majority of them had much more nuanced thoughts than I had. They were also better informed.

Much like politics, religion was another difficult subject. There were other students who practiced their religions regularly like me, but there were many more who practiced a different religion, or who had one but didn’t practice it at all. Many of my friends identified as Christian but weren’t churchgoers. I met a few open atheists during my freshman year, a few Muslim students, cultural Jews, and some Catholics who were fairly liberal. The idea that there could be so much religious diversity in one place was eye-opening, but also difficult for me at first. I used to walk to the nearby Catholic church alone, before I met another student who was looking for a church buddy. My biggest moment of homesickness was when I was upset that I had no one to go to mass with me. It’s the only time that I cried as a freshman over something that I missed about home. Everything else was so new and exciting that I hardly had time to feel homesick.

I definitely made some social flubs along the way, but the time absolutely flew by once I started really sinking my teeth into classes and extracurricular activities. By my sophomore year I had finally grown accustomed to the fact that the people around me were going to think a thousand different things about the world, and that was OK.

Eventually, instead of looking for people to state my opinions to, I started to look for opinions and ideas I hadn’t heard before. I came into college with my parents’ opinions and religious beliefs, and came out with completely different ones.

Because I had finally been exposed to so much, I knew my ideas were my own. They were informed opinions I could be proud to have, and no, I won’t be bringing them up at lunch on the first day of work.

I know better than that now.

More Guest than Citizen: Jaelyn Bos’s Story

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“Be in the world, but not of it.”

This statement summarizes how good Christians are to relate to non-evangelicals, or so I have been told. It also describes my relationship to my peers prior to college.

As a homeschooler (K-12), I was something of an anomaly. My parents are moderately left-leaning in both their politics and their theology, which in Homeschool World makes them flaming liberals.

I had friends prior to college (primarily from a homeschool co-op), but I was also far lonelier than I understood. I worked hard in school, stayed quiet though conversations about Ken Ham and Sarah Palin, and kept my interests to myself. Though in their world, I was definitely not of it. I actually had a great variety of experiences in high school, from volunteering regularly in inner city DC to visiting a development organization in Honduras. Yet, in all these places, I was more guest than citizen, in but not of.

Thankfully, my family expected me to go to college. They supported me completely when I chose to live on-campus at a diverse public university.

My first few weeks at college felt like walking through the wardrobe into Narnia.

I was a little dazed, sure, but mostly I was dazzled but the discovery of a huge new world of ideas and activities and people. I made a friend from Albania, and a friend who was Jewish, and a friend who was bisexual. I discovered terms, like intersectionality, and causes, like transgender rights, that I barely knew existed. I played cards with mixed-gender groups of friends past midnight and nobody cared.

My academic transition was easy thanks to community college classes in high school and parents who made sure I received rigorous, well-rounded education. Socially, I was friendly, but struggled to see myself as part of a group. I still remember my bizarre feeling of surprise when I realized that I was just as capable of gathering my friends for dinner as was anyone else.

As the semester wore on, I carefully practiced being honest about myself. I admitted to my ignorance of pre-2012 pop culture, doubts about my sexuality, and fascination with evolutionary biology, and learned that no quirks are unique to one person. I realized that in being truthful, I could actually affect the opinions of others, and my opinions could evolve as well. I felt heard.

I learned that I could not only be genuine in my community, but also change it.

Joining a service learning program exposed me to concept of civic engagement, and amazing administrators and professors showed me how to take my ideas and run with them. On a more personal level, I sought other students in need of community and tried to be there for them.

I am now beginning my third year of college, double majoring in two sciences and mostly still loving it. My community is not perfect, but it is mine. To all of the homeschoolers facing a transition to college, I would like to give the same advice I gave the freshmen for whom I TA: Try new things, find help when you need it, be kind.

For you in particular, I will add that it is not your job to defend homeschooling. It is your job to find people you trust, and then be honest. Tell the truth about where you’ve been, what you care about, and what you don’t understand. Then listen to the others’ truths and allow them to change you.

Homeschooling taught me adaptability, and critical thinking, though perhaps I would have gained those same traits elsewhere. I do not know what my life would be had I not been homeschooled. I do know this. I am woven tight into the fabric of my community here, and I am not just in it. I am making it.

Dreaming of a Way Out: Mina’s Story

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HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Mina” is a pseudonym.

Lucky for me, I attended a parochial school from 1st through fifth grade. I loved it. I loved my friends, learning, the teachers—everything about school thrilled me.

However, at the age of ten, after my parents had fallen under the spell of a religious group associated with the Branch Davidians, and they moved my sister and I out of the state and into a single-wide trailer in a very rural area of the country.

We were isolated. And we were homeschooled for the rest of our education, save for one year when a number of the “cult parents” banded together to pay a fellow-follower to teach seven of the children in a spare bedroom.

We were a true homeschooling Christian family. We wore long skirts. We didn’t cut our hair. The men wore beards. It was a miserable existence.

However, I always found hope in the idea that I would turn 18 and could leave.

I longed for a real education, and since I had gone to a normal school for the first five years, I knew what the real world was like.

But the longer we were involved in the movement, the more socially awkward I became during the limited social interaction we had with “the worldly people” we encountered at church, in stores, etc.

As I recall, around age 16, my mother mostly gave up homeschooling.

My mom went into a severe depression, and I don’t recall any sort of structure related to my education. Somehow though, I figured out I needed a GED, and I somehow got a GED study book and figured out where I needed to go to take the tests. I spent long hours in the night studying for my GED. I had no one to teach me and no guidance, so it’s kind of amazing that I figured out what I needed to do to pass it.

My father was a very controlling man and did not believe girls needed education, so my parents were of no help in the GED process. Mostly I studied in secret so as not to anger my very controlling father.

Once I had completed my GED (around age 17) I wasn’t sure what the next step should be.

I had heard one of the other followers talking about her niece who was going to a proprietary technical school. It sounded like a way out, and I asked her for the address of the school. I secretly wrote the school and managed to intercept all the mail addressed to me from the school. You can imagine my parents surprise when two individuals from the school showed up at our doorstep to sign me up.

I think my parents were so dumbfounded that a month after I turned 18, I left home to attend the proprietary school.

I had written a church in the area seeking a place to stay and ended up living in the home of another religious family. But it was less religious, and I could finally breathe. But that’s when the trouble started with my parents – constant calls and letters. Guilt. It was a loss of control for them, so the pressure to return was enormous.

I led a double life. None of the girls in the technical school knew my background. Thinking back, I think most of the girls came from rough backgrounds (they weren’t university material so they ended up in technical school), so my oddness didn’t seem so odd to them. They all had troubles of their own. But for me, who had no idea about the differences between a technical school or a private university, it was an amazing (albeit very expensive) year of “college.”

While it was a technical school, it was VERY hard for me. I would go to school early in the morning to practice things like typing (which everyone else knew), then go to my PT job before coming back to school.

Keeping up was hard – I had no context for the things I was being taught, and I really struggled.

The computers were out of my league and very challenging, since I had never been exposed to a computer.

At graduation (it was a year-long program), my parents put a great deal of pressure on me to return home. They told me the Lord had told them I needed to return, and it became unbearable. While I had no interest in returning home, the guilt was too much, and I did return home and found a job. Once again, I had to lead a double life – behaving one way at work and another way at home. After about nine months, I couldn’t stand it. My parent’s had become very controlling, and I knew I had to escape.

I had met a person who was going to a religious college in TN. I had no way of knowing about other colleges so I determined, once again, to secretly apply. I applied and was accepted. It was a four year religious university. I was beyond thrilled and looking forward to moving away and having a new life.

But my parents disagreed, and in a shocking act of violence (that led to the arrest and conviction of my father), they prevented me from moving.

More shockingly, I had the strength to get the police involved, and this ended up opening a few doors for me. I learned about community college and enrolled. But I was lost. I went to the guidance counselors, but they seemed out of their depth in dealing with someone who had no frame of reference for education. I muddled my way through one year before I quit and went to work full time as a secretary, all the while taking an occasional community college class here or there.

But secretly, I had a dream to become a lawyer. I had never met a lawyer, nor did I have any idea how to get to law school. But that little secret dream kept driving me. And I figured out how to apply to state universities. As I recall, since I had no grade or SATs, the university took me on as a special case. But there was so much I didn’t know, and the first two years were miserable. I felt so dumb.

I just didn’t know the basics that most people learn in high school.

Like math. I simply had no math education, and the college sent me to special high school classes to take math. I had no idea what anyone was talking about most of those first two years of university and, I made no friends. It was a foreign world – from the literature that was read to the science classes. I have no idea how I made it through – but I did. And I managed to graduate with a degree in journalism.

I eventually did find my way to law school.

And while I was older and not as socially awkward, it was still incredibly difficult for me. While other people seemed to know the basics of the constitution and how to research, I had no such skills, and I had to spend extra money hiring tutors to help me. But what I lacked in book skills, I made up for in zealous representation. I knew first-hand what it meant to be the underdog, and I knew how to fight for these people.

I’m now a partner in a large firm, and no one has any idea about my background. When other partners scoff at community college or state universities as being such bad schools, it stings, especially when I recall how difficult it was for me.

Homeschooling gave me no skills. It left me without a framework from which to understand the world’s social cues or even how to learn.

ANSWERS TO THE SPECIFIC QUESTIONS

• Experiences with socialization: When you stepped foot onto your college campus, did you realize you were (as many parents argue) well-socialized already? Or did you realize that you were not (and that those many parents misunderstood the meaning of socialization)? What sorts of difficulties (if you did experience difficulties) regarding social interactions and interpersonal communication did you have to deal with?

During the first year of college, I attended a technical school. Because it wasn’t a true college in the ordinary sense of the word, and the demographic that attended tended to be those who came from lower socio-economic backgrounds or who had not done well in school and couldn’t get accepted into a traditional university, I was able to bond fairly quickly with these people. Because they came from situations of poverty and often, domestic violence, we all seemed to have a common understanding that we were the “misfits” and this understanding created the basis for strong friendships.

However, following the year of technical school, I attended a state community college and then a state university, and finding friends and interacting with other students did not go well for me in these educational settings. My peers were often from (at least it seemed to me) affluent backgrounds. They knew things and had experiences I knew nothing about. I was scared so much of the time and made very few friends. I recall a group singing the tune for the game show “Jeopardy.” I hadn’t been exposed to TV, so I didn’t know what they were singing. When I asked, one of the students sighed and asked whether I had grown up under a rock? Indeed, that’s how I felt – I had grown up under a rock, completely devoid of normal social interaction. I had been taught to fear “worldly people,” and figuring out how to talk with “sinners” left me puzzled.

Interestingly, of the friends I did make during my university years, almost all were Asian immigrants, and even today, many of my closest friends are immigrants. I think my homeschooling and religious background was similar to the experience of immigrants who come to America. None of us were familiar with the traditional American culture. In a sense, I, like the immigrants, had grown up eating food, wearing clothing, and holding a cultural belief system that was not part of the traditional US culture – a culture that was as foreign to the immigrants as it was to me.

• Experiences with diversity: If college was the first time you had significant interaction with people of diverse backgrounds (atheist, non-Christian, Buddhist, gay, lesbian, trans*, people from different cultures or ethnicities than you, etc.), what was that like? Did you have any stereotypes in your mind about those people that were deconstructed?

Interestingly, while college really was the first time I was exposed to individuals who were different than me, I was surprisingly very accepting of these people. Because my life had been so sheltered in terms of interacting with “worldly people,” I had no frame of reference. And because my parents avoided all sexual conversations, we never discussed lesbians or homosexuals and I don’t know that I even knew anything about diversity in terms of sexual orientation. Lucky for me, my first ten years of life were spent in a fairly normal way, and in a state that was very diverse, so my experience with racial diversity had been positive and I think actually helped me gravitate to the immigrants who attended school.

• Experiences with academics: If you went to a secular college or a “liberal” Christian college, did you go thinking it would be a battleground for your soul? Was it? Were they any surprises you faced about how the college and its other students treated you?

While I initially had internal conflicts about giving up my religious beliefs (or at least the beliefs I had been forced to pretend to accept) it was actually (and surprisingly) quite easy for me to walk away from Christianity. I immediately began wearing makeup and jewelry (forbidden in my religious home). I did not have any real wrestling in terms of the direction of my soul or whether I needed to convert others. I don’t know how I escaped all that – I think I was just old enough (10) when my parents got into the cult that I already had a strong enough sense of self to see the ridiculousness of my parent’s new found beliefs.

• Experience with studies: Were there any topic matters that you excelled at, that you didn’t think you would? Did you realize your homeschooling education was actually pretty well-rounded, or did you realize it was severely lacking in certain areas?

My homeschooling was severely lacking and I struggled throughout college in every subject save psychology. Psychology came easy. Math, economics, literature, science – none of it was relatable. I had such a poor education, I didn’t know the basics. I didn’t know geography. I knew nothing and I literally had to fake my knowledge. And study very hard-which was tough because I hadn’t ever really been taught to study either. I hadn’t been exposed to world events. I hadn’t been exposed to books except religious books. I knew nothing about the world around me.
It was tough. I remember the professors seemed at a loss as to what to do with me – I tried so hard, but so often my grades were so poor. Somehow I muddled though – figuring out the answers but never really understanding the context because I didn’t understand the world in which I was living.

• Experiences with your parents: Did your parents support your enrollment in college? Did you have to fight with them to be able to go? Were they eager to help you get financial aid? Or did they withhold necessary documents?

My parents hated the idea of college. They saw no reason for a woman to go to school and they provided no support whatsoever – they had controlled my every movement before I went to college and the loss of control was very hard for them. They sent me long letters filled with scripture and prayers for my soul.

My parents had some strange beliefs about the government and hence had not applied for a social security card for me. When I knew I was going to go to college, I got a job at a farm picking strawberries. The employer wanted to know my social security number – which of course, I didn’t have. Somehow I managed to apply for the card and the resulting fury from my parents (specifically my father) was terrible and very frightening. Their fury (when I decided to go to college) actually led to their acting in a significantly violent manner that resulted in the police being involved.

Awkward But Determined: Darcy’s Story

HA Editorial Team8 Comments

 

At my homeschool graduation ceremony, I received around a thousand dollars in gifts from friends and family. I decided right then and there that I would spend it on the first month of classes at the community college in the city. I didn’t have a plan, I only knew I had to do something, had to get out of our house, had to fill my time while my boyfriend and I tried to talk my parents into letting us court and marry. (You can read that story here.) I had an idea that I would take all music classes so I could be better educated to teach my piano students. I didn’t know anything about how to fulfill certain credits, or what credits were, how to get a degree, how to plan your college years.

I was completely ignorant about how it worked. But that didn’t stop me. I’ve always been stubborn like that. 

I walked onto campus the first day of school and sat down with an advisor. He was a little baffled about what my plan was and why I’d waited until the first day, but said it wasn’t too late. I handed him my GED and SAT scores (I had taken the COMPASS test just for kicks a few months before). He determined I wanted to be a music major (I didn’t know what that meant but I figured he knew what he was talking about), and signed me up for Theory 101 and several other classes, including some general education classes and an art class that fit an elective credit. I was euphoric. I was going to college!

The next day, I drove the 1 hour drive from our home in the mountains to the college campus in town. I was nervous as hell. A real classroom?! But I put on my confidence face and walked into my first class, an art class. I was amazed at the diversity of people there, and a little scared of them, but determined to be friendly and make friends. I still remember that I was wearing a very long, full blue skirt with a large, collared button-up blouse that was 3 sizes too big. With my long hair in braids, bangs curled to perfection, I was the perfect model of a stereotypical homeschooled girl. And everyone knew it but me.

The teacher was not excited to have a new student that started a day late, and had no supplies. I didn’t know I needed supplies. She gave me a list and I was appalled to find out how much they would cost. But I had a couple hundred left over from paying tuition so I knew I’d be OK. Until I discovered with each class that I’d need textbooks and that textbooks are outrageously expensive. I will never forget standing in the campus bookstore, totally lost, and handing my list to a helpful volunteer who found everything for me. Between the books and my art supplies, my leftover cash was wiped out. I knew my parents could never afford to pay for me, I didn’t know what financial aid was, and I would never be allowed to get a real job to pay for myself. But I was determined to have one great semester and not think too far ahead, just figure it out as I went.

There are so many stories I could tell about those two years.

I could fill pages with memories, some funny, some cringe-worthy, all that point to a spirited young woman who had determination and resilience, but who was thoroughly unprepared to be an adult.

Who didn’t even know what she didn’t know. Who gradually went from a skirted conservative homeschooler full of trepidation and fear of the world, to a person in her own right.

I could tell about how when my art teacher asked what our favorite artists were, everyone said various contemporary artists whom I had never heard of. I blurted out “Thomas Kinkaid”, much to the amusement of several students and the outright disdain of the teacher. Apparently Kinkaid was not considered a real artist in real art circles.

Or the time I finally found out what “gay” and “homosexual” meant after someone told me one of my friends at school was gay and I had to look that up in the dictionary. At 19 years old. I was fascinated and figured he was a cool person so it didn’t matter. He didn’t seem like more of an evil sinner than any other evil sinner. He was an educational friend to have for a girl who had never heard the word “penis” before and had no sex-education. He treated me with friendliness and thought my ignorance was hilarious and endearing.

Then there was the time I explained to one of my instructors that I couldn’t get the scholarship he was offering because I didn’t have a social security number. His reaction told me that this was so far from normal and it was the first time ever that I questioned the weirdness of not having identity. I credit him with helping me go through the grueling process to finally get one.

I cringe at all the times I was asked out on a date but didn’t really know what was happening.

Then there was that logic class that pretty much was the beginning of the end for many of my Fundy homeschool beliefs. Now I know why they say college and education corrupt good Christian kids. Because the majority of everything I learned from the likes of Bill Gothard and Joshua Harris and Ken Ham and our Abeka history books didn’t stand a chance against critical thinking and logic.

Explaining why I had a secret boyfriend but didn’t go on dates was another awkward memory I’d rather forget. Also explaining why he was secret and why I was so worried about my parents when I was an adult, not a child.

I cringe thinking about the clothes I wore that were ill-fitting and “modest” and frumpy. When friends took me shopping and I tried on real clothes that fit me right, I realized I was attractive and an adult and maybe I didn’t have to dress like my parents wanted me to all the time. I bought shorter, more fitted skirts and tall boots and tights and tops that were cute and fit me well. I even bought my first pair of jeans and sometimes changed into them in the car before going in to school because I didn’t want to deal with my parents freaking out over my clothing. I wanted so badly to have some freedom and independence but was still so afraid of what my parents would say, even to the point that I was worried someone who knew them would see me and tell them I was dressing immodestly at school. Eventually I got over that, with much fighting and “rebelling” and standing up for myself. You don’t get over having “obey your parents” drilled into you from birth overnight.

I ended up getting a job as a live-in nanny for the remainder of the two years I was in community college. I moved out of my parent’s home under much protest from them, but determined to find my own way and finish school. Caring for kids was something I knew and did well, and we were happy, my charges, their mom, and I. I paid my way through the next two years of school by nannying. I started buying my own clothing and got a stylish haircut at a salon, and realized I needed car insurance. My employer gave me a cell phone and I was able to talk to my boyfriend whenever I wanted to, which was heavenly.

In those two years, I grew up a little bit. I grew a backbone. I discovered the world was so much bigger and better than I’d ever imagined. 

As my relationship with my parents got worse, I became more confident in who I was and what I wanted in life. It would be another decade before I really broke free from all the crap that was my past, but those two years were a good start.

I look back, and I cringe. About everything. I was so unprepared for the world, for being an adult. I had to figure it all out by myself and it was overwhelming. I understand now the funny looks I would get from my instructors and friends. I knew nothing about financial management, banks, insurance, medical services, dating, sex, rent, bills, taxes or anything else that suddenly I was responsible for. I made a lot of mistakes and didn’t know it til years later. My parents were neither supportive nor a hindrance. I think they thought this was just something I got in my head to do and they didn’t really care. They gave me gas money to get to school until I moved out. They wouldn’t sign the FAFSA so I couldn’t get financial aid once I figured out what that was. They didn’t like me “out from under the umbrella” of their authority where they couldn’t see what I was doing and who I was with. I never really talked about my life in the city with them. I hid much of my self and my new, blossoming thoughts and changing beliefs We fought a lot when I went home on weekends. Our relationship continued to get worse until I got married the end of my 2nd year in school.

They had no idea how to prepare a child to be a functioning adult outside their homeschool bubble, and no idea how to have a relationship with an adult child.

I had no idea that I could be an adult, or what that meant, that I had a right to make my own decisions and plan my own life. It was a gradual dawning and a painful process.

Due to a number of reasons, not the least of which was my ignorance on how degrees worked, I ended those 2 years with 70 credits and no degree. I got married, started having babies, and my husband and I went through a lot in the first 10 years of our marriage. I am now 31 years old, and at 29 with four small children, I made the decision to go back to school. I’ve been taking classes online to finish my BA and have plans to go on to grad school when my youngest starts Kindergarten. I’m now a senior at a state university. I know the ropes this time. I’m doing well. Still pulling great grades and enjoying the learning experience.  I’m planning a career and that makes me happy and gives me hope for the future. I wish I had known more and finished my Bachelor’s before having children, before life got more complicated, but here I am. Hind-sight can’t help me now. There is only the future and it’s a bright one.

My kids like to say fondly that I’m not a real grown-up because I’m still in school. They have no idea the irony of that. Someday, maybe I’ll tell them.

Family was my Everything: Alida’s Story, Conclusion

HA Editorial Team2 Comments

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Alida” is a pseudonym.

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In this series: Part One | Conclusion

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Sometime during that first semester away, one of my Facebook friends shared an article from Homeschoolers Anonymous. I’d heard the name Cynthia Jeub before in the speech-and-debate social circle, so I clicked.

I read a lot of things on HA. It was a really empowering experience. Some of it made me thankful that my family wasn’t as extreme as those in the stories I read. Most of it made me furious, especially the stories with strong themes related to courtship, purity, and financial independence, all of which are important parts of my personal journey.

I started doing my own research.

I wanted to make sure I wasn’t trading one set of evils for another. The first time I had heard about HA, it was by overhearing a conversation a few years ago between another homeschool mom and my own. They were talking about some kind of online forum founded by angry former homeschoolers who had been ‘seduced by the lies of the world’ during their time at secular college. The people behind HA, they said, wanted to bring down homeschooling and turn our young people against their parents. I was told never to visit the site.

I’m a communication major, an editor for my university’s newspaper. A major theme in our department is the importance of a journalist’s role in truthfully telling a stranger’s story. The journalist must set aside their own thoughts and opinions, focusing on what happened in their subject’s life. The journalist must truly believe in the concept that every person’s story is inherently valuable and worth telling. These ideas really resonated with me. I focused on learning to listen to someone else’s narrative. Developing a more generous, more open-hearted attitude helped me expand my ability to love people.

As I learned more and more about the broken systems and frameworks of the culture I had been raised in, I started to feel more and more at ease in society.

The strangeness of being in a different world wasn’t as bad once I learned that my little corner was the strange one after all. I learned about feminism, race relations, and LGBTQ issues in American culture. I decided to educate myself on American subcultures I had previously been shielded from.

Learning about others allowed me to learn about myself.

Discovering who I am helped push me a little closer to fearlessness in many ways.

Learning the truth about my sexuality was a big turning point for me. For a long time, I had suspected that either the entire rest of the world was lying about sex being so exciting and being the first thing on their minds or that there was something very wrong with me. I had always assumed that my lack of sexual attraction to people was some kind of unfortunate result of the way I was raised, that maybe after trying for so many years to not think about sex (because that’s “wrong”), I had somehow gotten really good at doing so and lost the ability to function normally. But as I got to know myself more, I came to be at peace with the fact that I just have a different sexual orientation. I’m Asexual. (check out http://www.asexuality.org/home/?q=overview.html to learn more).

As I struggled to understand more and more about the details of myself and the people I was meeting, I tried to decide if it was worth coming out to my family. I knew what they would say. All my life, I had been told that no other sexual orientations existed aside from being straight. Everyone who “said they were gay” was just confused and “lost in the ways of this world.” So I said nothing.

The research hours I was putting in toward learning about everything from religious cults to feminism to minority relations and beyond was all starting to take shape. My views on social issues shifted, and I found myself re-considering the anti-LGBT systems I had been taught to believe. I’m now pro-marriage equality. How had I believed for so long that it was OK to legislate the behavior of our entire country’s population based on the religious beliefs of one sub-group? I channeled all the Libertarian arguments my speech-and-debate friends had repeated over and over and decided to really follow up on my belief that everyone should have the right to pursue happiness on their own terms as long as it doesn’t harm others.

By second semester, I had started dating someone, and after a while, we discussed that we were both interested in forming a longer-term relationship. So I told him about my sexuality. For me, deep emotional and intellectual intimacy was not inherently linked to sex, I said. I wanted to make sure that before we made a bigger commitment, he knew I didn’t want to have sex with him, and my desires probably wouldn’t change. He told me that sex was really important to him in a relationship, and he just couldn’t see anything long-term working out without it. It hurt, but I guess I knew what I was in for. We decided to stay friends. As time has gone on, our friendship has somehow managed to persist; I even slept over at his house once when I was having roommate trouble. We are affectionate and still kiss, but my feelings toward him are platonic now. And we still never have sex.

My dad called and said he was worried about my moral conduct. Through my brother, he had found out about the time I slept over at the guy’s house. He demanded to know if I had had sex, and I told him the truth. No, no sex was had. To myself, I wondered for the first time — was it really any of his business? He kept pressing me for answers, so I came out to him and did my best to explain asexuality as I sobbed on FaceTime. I don’t think it was fair that I wasn’t able to have this conversation with my family in person, in my own time, and on my own terms.

The academic year ended, and for athletic reasons, I spent most of the summer away from home. I wasn’t near my family when Marriage Equality became legal on June 26. I was so happy, but knew it was important to pick my battles, so I didn’t post anything on Facebook about my support for the ruling. I hardly even commented on my friends’ posts.

All I wanted to do was have a peaceful relationship with my family.

But they knew.

By the time I came home with just under three weeks of the summer left, one of my siblings had already told me that I “didn’t belong in this family anymore.”

It hurt so much, especially after having sacrificed what felt like everything, over and over, in the name of family.

I didn’t know what to do. I noticed that living at home was different than it had been. Early on after my arrival, we had a confrontation about our now-differing political opinions. Even though the confrontation sucked, I was glad we had clearly articulated our differences and could move on. But we couldn’t move on, apparently.

My mom found ways to make so many daily interactions and normal tasks into opportunities to remind me how wrong my opinions were. I felt so trapped, like I couldn’t take a step in any direction without setting her off. Within the week, my parents and I got into yelling matches that covered everything from suicide rates in LGBT kids (who are up to 400% more likely to attempt taking their own lives as straight kids), to the Facebook incident from the year before.

I remember so clearly the moment one of those nights when my mom told me that I didn’t have a right to privacy.

I hate the way I screamed back at them; I hate the way I had absolutely no control over my response to the situation. I felt like a separate person. I was out of control. Something about being cornered, not being accepted, being talked down to over and over had triggered intense anger problems I thought I had gotten over years ago. “You need professional help,” they told me. They wanted to take me to see a pastor for counselling.

I immediately said no to that. I was open to getting help from a professional psychologist for my anger, but there was no way I wanted to sit down with someone who would speak with me from only a religious perspective, trying to ‘correct’ the fact that I had a different political opinion than them. We compromised and found a psychologist who was a Christian but also had a formal education in mental health, etc. Talking with her was really good for me.

We talked more about my anger and sadness. She didn’t tell me that I was evil or give my any of the fear-mongering rhetoric I somehow expected.

She listened to what I was feeling and affirmed that I wasn’t crazy for thinking things on my own.

She said it was ok that I was mad when my mom said I didn’t have a right to privacy. She said I was correct in having switched my Facebook password last year. She said it was ok that I have my own opinions, and while it was nice that I was still was on board with Christianity as a whole, my family still would have no right to make me feel like shit if I wasn’t. It felt so good to have someone say that I’m not crazy or a bad person for doing and saying and believing and acting the way I choose to.

And that’s where I’m at now. With one year of school left, I’m doing my best to figure out how to become financially stable as quickly as possible so I can complete my transition to adulthood by living on my own after graduation. I still believe that my family is the most important thing in my life, and I want to find a way to live at peace with them. But I think all this stuff I have to experience is a good thing. I’m ok with it.

Family was my Everything: Alida’s Story, Part One

HA Editorial Team1 Comment

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Alida” is a pseudonym.

Moving from Homeschool to College was a lot tougher than I expected. I’m currently in my final year of undergrad, and I think I’m still adjusting.

I was one of those homeschool kids that took college classes in high school, which made me assume I’d have college totally figured out. Of course I was wrong.

Seven years after my first college course, I’m still struggling to find where I make sense and figure out the process of growing up.

Freshman year, I went to a private Christian university, along with a handful of kids from my homeschool, speech-and-debate social circle. I hardly grew as a person at all that year.

Sometimes I can look back at experiences and point out something that started a trend in my life, or a particular moment that was eye-opening in a way that isn’t identifiable until I link it to other events that happened later. There are only two instances like that from freshman year I can look back at.

The first is when I chose not to sit next to these two students in math class. In all honestly, it was because I thought they both looked weird. Those two ended up becoming my best friends at that school. We’re still in touch, and one of them I still consider my best friend.

The second is when I made friends with a person who identified as lesbian at the time. I remember deliberately trying to integrate into a different friend group so I would have an excuse not to hang out with them. As The Bible had been paraphrased to me so many times, “you become like the people you surround yourself with.” The gay agenda was very evil and very real to me at the time. We somehow ended up staying friends, which I attribute wholly to their kindness, tolerance and understanding, not mine.

During this time, I also was suffering from anorexia and bulimia.

When I was growing up, modesty culture influenced nearly everything around me.

I remember all the rules about how I was supposed to dress, talk, behave, and have friends. My shorts had to be at least a certain length. No clothes could be too snug. I shouldn’t speak so loudly now that I was a young lady. I was always to keep a “pleasant countenance” by smiling. Once I turned 13, it was no longer appropriate to have boys as friends.

My mom and dad told me all of these rules were very important because “men function differently than women,” and I might “cause them to stumble by my conduct” if I wasn’t careful enough. I never had a sex ed, but I attended a purity class, went to one of those father-daughter dances where you sign a paper about staying pure, the whole shebang.

For sophomore year, I had to move home and go to Community College for a while. I lived at my parents’ house. Again, I didn’t see myself changing much. I couldn’t see it from there.

And aside from what some covert internet searches had told me, I still didn’t know what sex was, even as a second-year college student.

This was also the first time I joined a sport since Tee-ball.

One day I was stretching with my teammates before a race, and I asked to trade places in the circle with someone else so I could move to the opposite side. When the girls asked me why, I explained that my back had been facing the men’s team, and “I didn’t want them lusting after my body” as we bent over to stretch our hamstrings. All the girls laughed at me. The girl who switched places with me laughed too and said something about how the boys could lust all they wanted- her booty was on fire!

I remember going quiet as my face turned red; I had never been in a situation before where saying something like that was weird or abnormal. But I also remember feeling self-righteous, thinking about how much holier I was than them, how much better of a person I was. I wasn’t the same kind of girl they were, I told myself. I was saving my body in every way for the man it would one day belong to.

Being around those girls was good for me. I slowly recovered from my eating disorders. Looking back, I’ve been able to identify the reasons I developed them in the first place.

All the modesty and purity-related messages I heard for so many years had internalized into the theme that my body was something wrong, something negative, something to be covered, something to be ashamed of.

Something to be hated.

As I started to get more involved in the sport, I started to see my body as something amazing. I lifted weights for the first time, and my body was something strong, something capable. My team started winning races, and my body was something useful, something functional. My body, to me, was no longer something exclusively sexual and therefore inherently sinful. My body was now something I could command to be strong, to accomplish a task, to fight for my teammates every day during practice and during races. I had motivation now to take care of my body, to be the best athlete I could be.

I said I would only ever date Christian men.

Over the years, I had been told many times that it was wrong to be in any kind of emotional relationship with someone who wasn’t also a believer, whether it be romantic or just a friendship.

So I dated a Christian guy from my social circle. After a little while, my parents forbade me from socializing with him, pointing out his “flaws” and “undesirable character traits,” saying we weren’t a good enough match. At the time, I experienced sadness but still firmly believed that as an unmarried woman living under her father’s roof, it was my duty to obey him. It was “scriptural” that I allow him to be my authority, they said.

Looking back on the situation, I see three things. The first is that my parents ended up being right about this guy. The second is that my they felt the need to exercise absolute control over my relationship. The third is that even though they were right about him, they should not have controlled my relationship the way they did.

But at the time, I didn’t know any better.

The next year, I started dating a good friend from my academic program. Tyler was the first man I fell in love with. I knew that he wasn’t religious, so we went to great lengths to see each other at times when my parents wouldn’t find out about our relationship. I made up lies about having to stay late at work or lead a study group at the library. We kissed a lot but never had sex, even though he wanted to. I remember being very proud of myself for that.

The entire time though, I experienced crippling guilt, especially when my mom and dad started to ask questions.

I eventually told them the truth, and on the same day, amidst tears, promised I would break up with him.

But I didn’t break up with him. We talked about getting married one day. As an “informed agnostic,” as Tyler called himself, it was difficult for him to understand the emotional and psychological toll that deceiving my family had on me. He didn’t have 21 years of homeschooled Christian culture and expectations weighing down on him. Family was my everything.

That summer, I fought with my mom more than I could ever remember. Multiple times, she threatened to kick me out of the house. Finally, I couldn’t handle it anymore. It was him or my family. I chose my family and prayed it would be worth it. My brother went into my phone and Facebook, blocking Tyler on both. Even though I knew how to disable the block settings, I didn’t. I told myself that abiding by my family’s wishes would help me.

For my fourth year of college, I earned an athletic scholarship and was able to transfer to the university I currently attend.

I moved to the opposite coast, and it was my first time not living under my parents’ roof.

One day, about a month into the semester, I was messaging a classmate on Facebook about studying for a quiz together. We decided that he would come over to my dorm to study and then watch the Avengers. A few minutes later, I got a call from my mom. When I answered, she started asking me how the day was going, if I had any plans, etc. So I told her about my day, and said that “I was actually about to study for a quiz, so I can’t really talk for long.” I wanted to end the call so I could go let my friend in.

Mom kept pressing me for details. “Are you sure there’s not anything else you want to tell me?” Nope, there wasn’t anything else I wanted to tell her. I couldn’t identify why I didn’t want to tell her that I had a boy coming over. We weren’t planning to do anything ‘bad,’ but for some reason I still felt very uncomfortable. Facebook dinged again. He was waiting outside the building. I felt annoyed with both mom and myself that I had to rush her off the phone.

The next day, mom called me again. “I know that you were hanging out with a boy yesterday, and that you didn’t tell me about it when I asked you point-blank,” she said. She had the password to my Facebook? I’d changed it multiple times through the years since I made it when I was 16.

Even from 3,000 miles away, she still had to control my interpersonal interactions.

She told me that I had sinned by omission and that by hiding important details, had caused her to doubt my spiritual health. I didn’t know what to say. Half an hour later, I found myself sobbing uncontrollably to my roommate, not understanding why I felt the way I did, feeling embarrassed that a situation that felt so stupid had evoked such strong emotions. My roommate told me that I had a right to privacy and that it was ok to keep some things to myself. No one had ever told me that before. I changed my password later that day, hating that I had to do it.

How I Learned to Pregame (and Other Transitions): Casey’s Story

HA Editorial Team2 Comments

There are certain things you expect on move-in day: The frantic in-and-out of your new neighbors transferring mountains of luggage from car to dorm room, being forced to repeat your name and hometown fifty times before sunset, excited hellos and heartfelt goodbyes. The faint whir of your pathetically small desk fan, which accomplishes little as the room fills with people and the last of the summer heat sets in. Getting to know your first roommate. Talking nervously, hoping you’ll click. Your parents making friends with her parents. Delaying the tearful moment when you hug your mom and dad and watch them drive away. Then, the moment comes. For every new college student, it comes. You are prepared. It is expected.

Mine was not.

“You don’t have to do this.” I’m not sure what possessed my mother to say these words, though I confess I wasn’t that surprised. Her eyes welled up with tears, and she did not let go of me. “You could come home and try community college. We could pack the car up right now. You don’t have to do this.”

I knew that as far as the infamous “college goodbyes” go, this was a bit on the extreme side, especially as I was positive that she meant it. Even having earned a full scholarship to my college of choice, therein saving us about $70,000 worth of financial burden, I was made aware from the start that if at any point I did not like it, I could drop out and be welcomed home. This, coming from the woman who raised me from infancy and schooled me for all of my life, both comforted me and stung the pride a little.

When I was four years old, all I could talk of was starting school. Having taught myself to read a year prior, I was already drawing my own comic books and writing short narratives to go along with them. I could count pretty high, and I thirsted for more, as much as my little mind could absorb. My parents decided the best option was for my mom to homeschool me, and through all of elementary, middle, and high school, she did – taking a strong role as teacher at first, and then letting me take more initiative as I grew older. She took note of my interests and chose curriculum based on that – for instance, my senior year I had an English textbook centered on The Lord of the Rings. It was a very “personalized” experience, tailored just to my unabashedly nerdy self. My mom put everything she had into properly educating me, to the extent that there was no privacy or separation between us. We were always together.

There was very little that I did without her, and almost nothing I possessed that was entirely my own.

We went to church and to bi-weekly homeschool meetings, from which I gained a total of three friends. Though I never felt unfulfilled in my schooling and excelled at most things I ventured to try, I was devastatingly lonely as a teen. Growing up in the most stereotypical of small, Southern towns, I had next to nothing in common with most of the other kids, who ridiculed my quirky personality and interest in books. My only release was in writing, which I did alone and often. To create brought me joy, and it wasn’t until my senior year of high school that I discovered a means of sharing that creativity with others: theater. And all of a sudden, I knew what my major would be.

It seemed cruel irony that less than a year after meeting the first genuine group of friends I ever had, I would have to leave them behind. That small community theatre was the outlet I desperately needed, and in my seventeen-year-old mind I was leaving the only place I would ever feel accepted. To tell the truth, my mom’s offer was a little bit tempting. Still, beyond a shadow of a doubt I knew my answer.

“I do,” I said, hugging her tightly. “I have to do this.”

So I did.

And it was the absolute time of my life.

The first week was the hardest. We were scheduled from day to night with festive activities to welcome the new freshmen – ice cream socials, mud volleyball, “get-to-know-you” circle games complete with constant regurgitation of everyone’s name and hometown – basically my school’s method of keeping us too busy to miss home. All it really accomplished for me was allowing no time to unpack; though I did make a few good friends fairly quickly, many of whom will probably be my bridesmaids if I ever decide to do the whole marriage thing. Still, when the first weekend came around, I visited home and found that it felt much different than I expected it to. Actually, it felt just like that – a visit.

My mom called to check in with me at least twice a week for a long time, and when my first assignment came around, she was more nervous than I was. “Let me proofread it,” she insisted. So, I put my all into this miniscule, two-page paper for English Comp 1 – the easiest paper no freshmen realize they will ever have to write – and let her have one more say in the quality of my scholastic work. With her approval, I turned it in expecting a C+ or a B at most.

I got an A+.

This baffled me. Yes, I had always made good grades in the past, but those were from my mother. Every mother thinks her kid is the best and the brightest; this was my first experience receiving praise from a teacher who wasn’t obligated to give it. In time, I found that other teachers, as well as peers, found me intelligent and hard-working, an overachiever even. In reality I pushed myself harder at first because I expected to come up short.

With no real world experience with which to compare my level of knowledge, I had no idea I was actually smart until I went to college and realized that I could do this on my own.

I had, in fact, been thoroughly prepared. And on that foundation my confidence started to grow exponentially.

Soon after, I became more integrated into the theatre department and the honors college, and started making a lot of friends in a short span of time. I even caved and pledged a social club, which is my school’s version of a mini-sorority, only smaller, cheaper, and exclusive to the campus. The extent of my book smarts became as apparent as my lack of street smarts. I can still remember my first experience with alcohol (as can my social club sisters, as they like to remind me every chance they get): When asked to “pregame” with them one Friday night, I brought over a curling iron and makeup, thinking that term was synonymous with primping before going out (or as I so eloquently put it, “doing each other’s hair and stuff”). They laughed (with me, not at me, which was nice), shook their heads and handed me my first drink. In hindsight, I would have been an easy one to manipulate, humiliate, take advantage of…any and all of the above. But these friends weren’t like that. It was simple: We had fun together, I cared for them, and they cared for me. On multiple occasions they took care of me. And words could not describe how lucky I felt or how much I appreciated every positive relationship I had with my peers. They also appreciated my incessant Hobbit references, which was a definite plus.

One thing I’ve noticed with homeschoolers is that, once given the option of becoming social, they will remain in their comfortable shell, or they will eagerly break free. My parents had taught me all I needed to know about socializing myself, and I was ready. I knew that I should be quick to show kindness, but slow to trust. To take note of who would lift me up and who would tear me down. To probably wait on the dating thing, but always “protect” myself if I decided to do it anyway. Oh, and to keep a can of wasp spray in my dorm room, because unlike pepper spray, “they won’t see that coming!” With all this in mind – and the wasp spray in its designated spot on my bedside table – I became something of a social butterfly. And as someone who suffers from Social Anxiety, I really surprised myself on that one.

I’d always wanted to branch out and find others that I could feel comfortable with.

And after going without for so long, I doubt that will be something I’ll ever take for granted.

I should establish that my campus is well-known for being extraordinarily friendly and open to all, which is a significant portion of why our alumni base is so active and supportive: For me, and for countless others, this small liberal arts college was not just a place of education but a tight-knit community, even a home. Differences of race, religion, culture, gender identity, and sexual orientation created very few divides – we were all family. And it was incredible.

This may sound like a paradox, but I was raised a Progressive Christian in a very Fundamentalist Christian church. The Fundamentalist faith was what my parents knew and understood, so they took me to church every Sunday, where I would sit silently (like a good female) and agree with about half of what was preached to us. Politically and socially, both mom and dad were quite liberal. They raised me to love and accept everyone equally, yet college gave me my first experience with true diversity. For instance, I had never met a transgender person before, and though I had spent many a Sunday morning listening to the same “we are right, they are wrong” speech behind the same pulpit, I had never experienced real, enlightening discourse regarding religion. Here, I could actually learn from other people with a wide variety of backgrounds.

My own beliefs, both spiritual and political, developed and took concrete form.

Though I started out Progressive, I grew more so, and I held on to my faith with a better understanding of what it should signify: Love. Not judgment, never exclusion. Just love.

With each new year of school I made leaps and bounds in my personal growth, learning so much about myself in such a short span of time that from sophomore to junior to senior year, it was like becoming a whole new person four times. Developing “street smarts,” and with them my own personal tastes and interests. Becoming more cultured through experience and associations. Swearing when angry, and not feeling bad about it. I like to think of it as making up for lost time.

But not all answers would come with ease. As graduation grew closer, I grew more unsure of what I wanted to do after. A general theatre degree carries with it a wider range of possibilities than one might think: Did I want to act, or paint sets? Research plays, or try to publish my own? Following an internship in stage lighting, I found my answer. And that began my first ever mental switch from school world to career world.

As it turned out, pushing myself so hard in classes had caused me to neglect some things that I would really need once school was over. The theatre department saw me as “honors student first, theatre major second,” which I realized was true, and not, in the bigger scheme, a great thing.

I was thankful for my generous scholarship and wanted to prove myself: “Get good grades,” in my homeschooled head, was always going to be the goal.

But what my parents didn’t know to warn me about was that being a successful theatre technician has little to do with grades and everything to do with hands-on experience. My GPA was near perfect, yet I was a senior by the time I had finally declared my emphasis in lighting design. It took nearly all four years to earn the full respect of the other theatre majors, who understood what it took me regrettably longer to grasp: that we were there to pursue a career and one requiring not a 4.0 and honors cords but a remarkable tech portfolio. I had a lot of catching up to do in that respect.

Now that I’ve been out of college for over a year, I do regret that lost time. But, in continuation of the habit, I’ve made up for it as best I can. Once my brain was able to shift from school to career mode, it became my passion. I travel often for work now, something I’ve always dreamed of doing. I go to the mountains, to tropical regions, theme parks, the Big Apple, once a Tony-winning regional theatre, doing what I love every step of the way. I think back on my lonely years in that small town and wonder if I would have the same appreciation for the incredible things I get to see and do had I not been contained there for so long.

Though in a considerable many cases homeschooling can be a terrible idea, I see my personal story as a successful one. Not perfect, by any means, as I was heavily sheltered and limited mostly to my mom’s perspective. Luckily for me, this also meant that I got to learn from a strong, intelligent and open-minded woman whom I will always look up to, and that made all the difference. Though I had a lot still to learn once I got to college, very little of it was learned “the hard way.”

Because on that first move-in day, when I made the decision to stay, the decision to see life as a new adventure came along with it.

I guess I’m kind of like Bilbo Baggins. And college was my Gandalf.

Crooked Arrow: Smith Lingo’s Story

HA Editorial Team10 Comments

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Smith Lingo” is a pseudonym.

My dad found Jesus towards the end of his college education and immediately wanted to quit his music studies and run off to seminary. Or so he tells me. He only had a year left, so he decided to stick it through to graduate. But that initial determination to sacrifice the reality of his own needs and wants for a far-off ideal, some abstract standard, is something he’s never abandoned, and something he’s done his damndest to pass on to the kids.

Soon after graduating and getting married to my Mom he became seized with another defining idea: that they were destined to be parents, and they would parent not just the amount of children that was healthy, sustainable, or economically viable, but that they would conceive, deliver, and raise as many children they physically could.

This was driven by a rhetorical idea of children not defined as individuals, but a collective force.

Children as “arrows in the hands of a warrior”, “blessings from the Lord”, things to be multiplied instead of cherished, raised for gain as political clout or a future care-taking staff instead of for love.

It was in service to this idea then that my father went back to school for Computer Science, working at a gas station in the morning, going to class in the day, and poring over his Calculus textbook at night. He wanted a new career path, one that paid better than music education. He worked the long days in service to his abstract idea of children — the arrows, the blessings — while the same work separated him from his concrete children. It was for all his future children too, the children of the mind, that he labored and studied while the children of his present were fatherless.

I realized from a very early age that my dad cared more about me as an idea than about me as a person, a discrete, tangible being.

The very first thing I was taught in our homeschool of hard mental knocks was to tell him what he wanted to hear, to tell him what the child of his mind would say. If I didn’t, I knew he would try to pry it out of me, convinced he was simply refining an imperfect vessel, burning the dross away from my crude soul with paddles and palms. I can’t remember ever not knowing that my father was disinterested in my truth.

But, abstract as they were, my dad’s ideas had consequences, and one of those consequences was me. As difficult as it is to reconcile, without my parents’ reckless pursuit of their ideological army of children I would not exist. I am the physical manifestation of my parents’ ideas, even if I could never measure up to the mind-mold in their eyes. As I come to disagree with those fundamental ideas, it becomes more of a struggle. I am opposed to the very reason I exist. I must take the position that if what was best had been, I would never have been born. This is the poison of ideology.

A few years ago, my homeschool education came to an end. I graduated in a ceremony with other homeschoolers from the local area, kids I was lucky to have seen a handful of times in the previous years. I remember before the ceremony the parents of the graduating seniors tried to plan social events for the class. Looking back now through the lens of disillusionment it seems like a desperate attempt to make up for decades of conscious desocialization in a few short months. It certainly worked about as well as you’d expect from that viewpoint.

The first event I attended may have been the first time I had faced the prospect of a purely social gathering by myself. I was terrified, and anxious, and awkward, feelings I would come to be intimate with in the following years.

I was facing for the first time a seemingly impassable gulf of experience and knowledge that my parents never taught me in the syllabus of my home education, and I hadn’t been allowed to gather outside. They had prepared me to take tests in Algebra and English, to converse with adults about the Will of God, to make change, and to tell time.

But they had always, actively kept me from independently forming relationships with anyone my own age.

My parents adequately prepared me to score well on academic tests. I received a scholarship to go to college, and since I was born male and had scored well in Math they decided to allow me to attend the local university, my father’s alma mater, in Computer Science. I had become an expert in telling them what their abstract child would say, so I told them I would study Computer Science.

It was, I told them, a good career to support a family with, and I may not have said the words, we both meant a family with as many future, abstract children as my future, abstract wife could possibly deliver. Their abstract child would never tell them he wanted to study film, so they never heard that in my gentle hints and information requests to other schools. The dross of my dreams was burned away.

I was becoming a pure ideological vessel, a well-fletched arrow they could shoot into the world.

The Gulf has returned to haunt me again and again. I’d recognize it anywhere. In every realm except the academic and physical, I am a child, with a child’s experience and knowledge. I am now old enough to legally drink, but we are born knowing how to drink. I am more than old enough now to connect with my peers, but I do not know how to do it; I never learned. And I am slowly learning now, but the Gulf between me and my generation grows larger as I try to build my flimsy bridges over it.

The Gulf paralyzes me, turns every phrase into mumbled gibberish in my mouth. Every situation contains an unknown, a reminder.

Every experience understood as universal that I can’t possibly relate to, every turn of phrase everyone else understands but is foreign to me, every reference that exposes my naivety transforms me from hulking twenty-something to socially floundering toddler.

College has corrupted the pure vessel my parents thought they had refined. The experience of opening my mind to the truth of people besides my father has bent the arrow they fletched so straight to their mark. I only lasted a semester in the Young Republicans. Nowadays I snicker in chatrooms about the spectre haunting Europe and envy the hammer-and-sickle tattoos my friends are getting.

I lingered at the outskirts of college ministry for a semester longer, but today I’m more concerned about the long-neglected physical ailments of my discrete body than the ideological ailments the campus crusaders claim to cure. And I’m more interested in the concrete bodies of the men and women around me in the present more than the form of a single, abstract, future woman. Perhaps someday I’ll raise a child.

If I do, I’ll raise them to be who they are and not to fit the mold of an ideological soldier in a biological army.

My parents have noticed the change. Every time I’m foolish enough to talk to them about what matters to me now, they purse their lips and shake their heads. The model has been spoiled; their beautiful idea is tarnished. They murmur about my professors, the media, my peers, always my peers. Never me. “I” still mean nothing to them; I’m still an arrow to be fletched and strung and released, an empty vessel to refine in fire. I could try to tell them about the Gulf, the daily struggle to belong to a society I’ve been held separate from for decades.

But the struggles of real people have never interested them as much as the ideological battles being waged in their minds, and on that battlefield, I’ve already been lost.

A Creeping Sense of Distance: Nastia’s Story

HA Editorial Team9 Comments

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Nastia” is a pseudonym.

I knew from a very young age what I wanted to do with my life. “I want to be on obstetrician,” I would tell anyone who would listen. At three years old, it was baffling to me that at least half the adults I met had no idea what that was. “It’s a doctor who delivers babies!” I would tell them, “Like Daddy!” The profession runs in my family. My grandfather and great-grandfather were both OB/GYNs, and my great-grandmother was a midwife. And yet, I have never felt pressured by others to take up the “family business.” It is purely my decision to pursue this path.

I had a rather unusual upbringing in this way. I come from a conservative evangelical family, but my parents are well-educated and open-minded, and they wanted nothing more than for me to be happy and successful.

While for many, “homeschooling” has an emphasis on the “home,” my parents put the emphasis on “school.”

That I was going to college was not up for debate; every step we took was made with the goal of stretching my mind, teaching me how to reason, preparing me for a lifetime of learning and a professional career. At the same time, they pushed me to pursue my own passions and dreams. I had a say in my own curriculum and was allowed to explore any subject I found interesting. While this may sound like an undisciplined teaching style, it kept me at least two grades ahead of my age in every subject and taught me to be self-motivated and proactive about my education.

That mindset was the best thing that I could have learned in preparation for higher education. At age sixteen, I entered community college through an early-entrance program in my state. This program allows students to complete their junior and senior years of high school through the college for free. My parents were hugely relieved that I would be able to earn my high school diploma and get real transcripts before applying to university.

I loved college. My transition was the easiest it could possibly have been. I excelled in my classes and quickly accumulated a diverse and quirky group of friends. Sure, college was a lot of work. I was taking twenty-one credits every quarter in order to finish all the pre-med requirements and earn an Associate’s Degree in Chemistry. There were ups and downs, sleepless nights, and failed experiments. But I had expected that, and my time management skills, self-discipline, and eagerness to learn benefited me enormously. Through diligence, the entire endeavor was highly successful. My confidence and enthusiasm soared.

But I soon found that going to school wasn’t the hardest part.

That came when I had to deal with the backlash of my (and my parents’) academic choices from a variety of different people.

The first came from my aunt, with whom I’ve never gotten along. A vehement socialist (and incidentally, a community college English teacher), she is viciously anti-homeschool, and it was clear from the beginning that she wanted me to fail in college to prove a point to my parents. When it was obvious that I was succeeding, she tried to tear me down emotionally, telling me that I was going to get sick because I was working too hard, that I had a mental disorder causing me to be a workaholic, and that success in school wasn’t worth my time because there was no way I could be successful in the real world.

That hurt, but as my relationship with her had always been a bit antagonistic, I turned it into a motivating factor. My goal became proving her wrong.

The pushback I received from homeschooled families in my church was much less motivating and much more painful. This didn’t really start until I applied and was accepted into a highly-ranked university, directly into the competitive Bio-engineering program.

In the view of many mothers especially, that was the point where I sold out, where I gave up my soul.

Going to community college, where I was living at home and going to school in a smaller, more job-like environment was acceptable. Entering university, where I would be in a co-ed dormitory with non-Christian students and exposing my mind to science and philosophy, was the equivalent of surrendering the battle for my soul. And it was difficult and depressing to deal with that because I was and still am very much a Christian.

The strange thing about it was that the criticism was never overt – it was a vague sum of micro-agressions, a creeping feeling of distance and disapproval that built up over time and poisoned my (albeit not-close) friendships with many homeschoolers in my church. I have a hard time pointing to clear examples, because the gradual alienation was caused by attitudes more than words or actions. I’m not even sure why I felt so hurt by it; I had never felt like I was a part of the “Christian Homeschool Culture.” My closest friends were actually homeschooled kids I met through music, not through my church. I never went to co-ops or conventions, never used A Beka or Bob Jones; I was always an outsider looking in on a culture that was as foreign to me as was the culture of public school. All the same, I had never felt so isolated as I did when I went to university.

I guess I had expected those I had always considered “my people” to be more accepting of me, even proud of me. That was the myth I had told myself growing up – that the homeschooling families in my church were “my people,” even though I was always outside their cliques, and that the reason I was always ahead of them academically was because I was simply smarter or my parents were better teachers. I was naïve; I thought we had similar lifestyles and values. And now here I was, succeeding in the world, spreading my light in the darkness. Isn’t that what those same families had taught me in Sunday School? That I didn’t even have to necessarily talk about Christ all the time – I just had to let my actions speak for themselves? I thought my honest and hard-won success, my healthy friendships, and my clean lifestyle made me a godly example. Instead, I was dismissed. People didn’t talk to me, or would abruptly end conversations when they heard what university I was at or what I was studying.

Previously-friendly parents would look at me critically and tell me things like, “Well, that’s not what God has in store for my daughter.”

That I was in STEM made it even worse, it seemed.

My parents were not immune to this stigma, and I think one of the most telling instances was when my mother was asked to speak at a monthly “Homeschool Moms’ Night,” when the subject of discussion was “Homeschooling Through High School and What Comes Next.” It was run by a sweet lady who has a very different homeschooling approach than my family does. Still, she wanted to showcase the range of options available to parents of younger kids.

Each of five women gave a speech, and then other moms were told to strike up a conversation with whoever seemed to match their own philosophy. Out of forty people, my mom had one person who wanted to talk to her, a woman from Hong Kong who didn’t like the state of American schools and was relieved that homeschooling could provide a more rigorous and comprehensive path. The other moms completely ignored her. I remember the rejection in her voice as she recounted the story to me. These were people she considered friends, but they completely dismissed her when she spoke passionately about helping her children make the most of their talents and aspirations.

After this, a small piece of a baffling puzzle fell into place for me.

Maybe my mother’s goal was not shared by others the way I had always assumed. Maybe the reason that nearly all the homeschooled girls my age were not going to college was something more than the fact that they just weren’t “ready” or weren’t “book-smart people.” Maybe it wasn’t a coincidence that the few who were pursuing higher education were going to community colleges or the tiny local Christian university aligned with our denomination; nobody was going to a secular university or anywhere out of state. It wasn’t an isolated instance that a girl decided to take up babysitting instead of going to college – it was widespread. It became normal to see friends drop out of college before taking a single class, or decide to live at home rather than stay in the dormitory; “she’s scared,” was always the chuckled explanation. It was commonplace to hear about another girl whose main goal of going to a barely-accredited Christian school was to find a husband and become a homeschooling mother.

This is an institutional problem, I realized.

It is still not clear to me whether parents are actively discouraging college for their daughters in particular, or whether the daughters are internalizing the idea that education would corrupt their hearts and minds and distract them from their duty of being wives and mothers. It had never occurred to me that this type of pressuring was occurring, as this is not the mindset of the majority of (non-homeschooling) people in my church. It is certainly not the doctrine that my well-educated and highly-rational pastor holds to. Yet, as I learn more about fundamentalism and about the situations of particular families, I am starting to put the pieces together. Talking with my mom now, there’s a reason that I was never put into co-ops and never used typical homeschooling resources. She realized what this sect was about long ago and tried to shield me from it.

For this reason – strangely – going to university broadened my perspective in yet another way; by putting me firmly on the outside, it gave me a clearer picture of the culture that surrounded me growing up, and an appreciation for how masterfully my parents handled my education. I will be eternally grateful for the unique opportunity they created for me and the generous support they constantly offered (and still offer) in continuing my education.

As for improving the cultural environment for college-bound homeschoolers, I’m not entirely sure what needs to be done, nor what one individual can possibly do. I realize that not everyone is cut out for higher education, and respect the right of families to pursue their own homeschooling path. However, the fact that I am an anomaly in my engineering school (because I was homeschooled) and an anomaly in my homeschool cohort (because I am an engineer) is very telling about the dichotomy that has grown between the academic and Christian communities.

It’s not a healthy divide, as the mistrust between the two groups makes understanding and progress extraordinarily difficult.

I’ve also grown to see that despite the opinions of many in the Christian homeschooling community, gender equality has not been achieved.

“Equal but different” is not good enough; there is still much work that needs to be done in providing the same education and career opportunities to women as are provided to men.

This by nature cannot be a policy issue, but a cultural reform. Parents must be honest with themselves when examining their daughters’ goals, and provide the necessary mental and emotional support for whatever path they are drawn to. It’s not logical to assume that a woman’s only contribution should be in the home, nor is it Biblical.

I’m not sure yet what it will take to bridge that chasm between Christians and academia, or the division between girls’ aspirations and their parents’ ideals. I’m not sure yet what it will take to change homeschoolers’ minds about science, higher education, and a woman’s place in both.

However, as a problem-solver by nature, rest assured that I will be trying, and I hope that some of you may join me.

Call for Stories: Tell Us About Your Transition from Homeschool to College!

HA Editorial Team7 Comments

By R.L. Stollar, HA Community Coordinator

For HA’s next open series, we want to hear from those of you who attended college (whether for one year, four years, or even into a Masters or PhD program!). We want to hear about your experience transitioning from homeschool to college. Was it easy? Difficult? A mixed bag? No matter where on the spectrum from “no problem” to “so many problems,” we would love to feature your personal story.

Topics you could potentially write about include:

  • Experiences with socialization: When you stepped foot onto your college campus, did you realize you were (as many parents argue) well-socialized already? Or did you realize that you were not (and that those many parents misunderstood the meaning of socialization)? What sorts of difficulties (if you did experience difficulties) regarding social interactions and interpersonal communication did you have to deal with?
  • Experiences with diversity: If college was the first time you had significant interaction with people of diverse backgrounds (atheist, non-Christian, Buddhist, gay, lesbian, trans*, people from different cultures or ethnicities than you, etc.), what was that like? Did you have any stereotypes in your mind about those people that were deconstructed?
  • Experiences with academics: If you went to a secular college or a “liberal” Christian college, did you go thinking it would be a battleground for your soul? Was it? Were they any surprises you faced about how the college and its other students treated you?
  • Experience with studies: Were there any topic matters that you excelled at, that you didn’t think you would? Did you realize your homeschooling education was actually pretty well-rounded, or did you realize it was severely lacking in certain areas?
  • Experiences with your parents: Did your parents support your enrollment in college? Did you have to fight with them to be able to go? Were they eager to help you get financial aid? Or did they withhold necessary documents?

Another area you are welcome to submit your thoughts about would be advice you’d give a future homeschool graduate who is heading to college. Potential questions you could answer can include:

  • What words of encouragement would you share with that graduate?
  • What words of caution might you give?
  • Are there any books, articles, or movies you’d suggest that a future homeschooled college student experience before stepping foot on a college campus?
  • If a future homeschooled college student feels uneducated (or miseducated) about important life knowledge (such as sex education, relationship dynamics, pop culture, etc.), what resources would you direct that individual towards?
  • Do you have any suggestions to future homeschooled college students about how to make the transition to college easier?

To contribute your story or thoughts:

Please email your submission (or any questions you have before submitting) to our editorial team at: ha.edteam@gmail.com.

As always, you can contribute anonymously or publicly. Let us know when you email your submission your preference in that regard.

The deadline for submission is Friday, September 18, 2015.