Homeschooling sounds like such an old-fashioned style of education, but when I look back on it, I think it was the most important years of my life. Homeschooling went through a time period where it wasn't common at all and now it seems that it's becoming a new-age idea again. When I was growing up it wasn't easy to come across many kids that weren't going to school either, but with the shifting beliefs in the modern day household it is becoming much cooler to be home schooled than to attend public school.

I was taught by my mother for the first two years of my homeschooling in second and third grade. We spent this time going on hikes and identifying various trees, plants and animals along the way instead of looking at pictures in a book and being quizzed on them in science class. Being home schooled gave me hands on learning for my young life. Singing songs that taught the continents, oceans and states helped me remember major geographical features of the world in a way that social studies probably never would have. Instead of memorizing conversion units, I remember my mother handing me an empty milk jug - exactly one gallon - and also handing me a one cup measuring cup and telling me to fill the milk jug using the cup. She then asked me how many times I had filled the measuring cup and emptied it into the gallon. The answer? Sixteen. Sixteen times I had gone through the pattern and that process gave me a way to remember how many cups are in a gallon, instead of learning it out of a math book.

The best thing about homeschooling was that we didn't have to follow the traditional educational course. I was able to learn what I wanted, when I wanted. I was able to move at my own pace and progress faster than kids my age in public school as I started doing trigonometry in eighth grade. My brother took over for teaching me when I was home schooled in sixth grade. I would go to him with all of my questions, giving him a chance to learn the old material better as he was forced to explain it in simpler terms for me. By the time I reached eighth grade, I had been weaned from being taught by other people and was fully self-sufficient. I would wake up, sit down and begin learning new information, do some review sheets and then test myself at the end of the day. It was because of this concentration and self-driven attitude that I was able to excel in college.

In high school, teachers will help you build papers, give you extensions, sit down and help you and keep you from failing out of school. However, college is not that way. If a student fails out of a class in college, it is their own fault and there is nobody there to keep them from doing such. Homeschooling gave me an opportunity to learn how to be self-directed enough to know that my education is my own responsibility and gave me the tools to be self-driven in academics no matter what. I feel like I owe homeschooling the majority of my success for these useful life lessons. I believe that more kids should be home schooled for this exact reason. It gives students a bigger sense of responsibility for their own education which is more likely to pay off in the future as opposed to the hand-holding approach taken by public schools. I know that homeschooling changed my life and I would love to see it change the lives of others for the better as well.