第797期:Free Schedule

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Adria: So since we're talking about homeschooling, what are some of the pros and cons that you feel of homeschooling?

Shiloh: Well one of the good things about homeschooling is definitely that you are able to work off of your own schedule. I didn't have to wake up early every morning. If I did, I could get my work done early. The amount of work that I had, the time I spent doing it was dependent upon me and my schedule and how much time I wanted to work. I had almost the same amount of work as all of my other friends in real schools but the difference was I didn't have scheduled breaks or lunches or anything so if I sat down for four hours and I just wanted to work straight, then I could finish a whole day's worth of work in four hours. That's a good thing about it, I was able to travel and some days I wouldn't even do any school work because I'd be busy doing other things but that meant that I would have to do two days some other time. One of the bad things was that I didn't get to meet quite as many new people. I didn't have the typical high school experience which I feel shapes a lot of who people are. I wasn't able to meet friends in that sense, in the high school sense. I still have great friends and I'm not a loner by any means but it was difficult to meet friends.

Adria: So did you find yourself slacking off? Some days you didn't do any school work because you were too busy but did you find yourself taking many breaks or not wanting to do school work sometimes?

Shiloh: Yeah, that's a big problem I think with homeschooling. The student really has to be self-motivated and if the student is not self-motivated, then the parent who is doing the homeschooling has to be very strict because it's really easy to just not do your work or to fake it and kind of do it badly and it's really important that somebody is there to drive you to do it well and to finish everything. Fortunately, I'm a fairly motivated guy and I always wanted to get my work done because I always had better things to be doing and I knew that if I didn't do it today, I'd have to do it twice tomorrow.

Adria: So do you think that's something homeschooling taught you was self-motivation that maybe other kids lack?

Shiloh: I think so. It taught me self-motivation and also it taught me how to plan things out. I was able to plan out my day and my schedule. I would think to myself well tomorrow I want to do this thing, I want to go do this which means I have to do this today in order to do this tomorrow.