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hey welcome back to the ex- homeschoolers club uh I'm your host Jacob Gooden and today I'm so excited
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for my friend Emily to be joining me Emily we have known each other for quite a long time um I've been trying to think
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about as I'm having people on like when we met or like a really like early memory I have of them and one of the
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things that I know you and I bonded over really quickly was our love for One Direction
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um back in like Junior High and High School um so yeah I think we were in like a
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guitar class together right yeah actually that's that's the first time I
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remember like interacting with you I think so I remember Madison from before cuz we were closer in age but but yeah
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the guitar class was the first one and I remember you wore like red pants in a stripy shirt and then all my friends
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were like oh my gosh it's like One Direction and then we all started dressing like One Direction too it's
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funny cuz like I I was thinking about like I've been as I've been reminiscing about like home
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school it's so funny because like I I didn't listen to a lot of pop music like I
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listen to Just a lot more like Christian music um and so the fact that I even like knew who won Direction was was kind
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of amazing I feel like the fact that any of the homeschoolers knew who won Direction was was kind of amazing did
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your did your parents let you listen to a bunch of pop music or not not really yeah I'd say so like I think I'm pretty
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sure the first CD I ever bought was like Justin Bieber like I think it was like My World 2.0 or something like that but
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that was like my first kind of exposure to like boy bands and or not not that he's a boy band but but yeah just that
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whole side of things and they didn't really I don't think they were too concerned about me listening to it or
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anything you see you had cool parents you know they were like overall I think they we were like kind of more anti like
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like the Pokemon Harry Potter side of things but then as far as like music went not not too much my parents didn't
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let me watch Harry Potter either um or I didn't I didn't play with Pokemon cards
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um so it wasn't yeah and then I got to college and everyone was into poke like
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into not Pokemon but into Harry Potter and they're like what house are you and
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like all that stuff and so I was like okay now I got to watch the movies um and figure out what house I'm a part of
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and you know all that kind of stuff but um have you since gone back and watched Harry Potter oh yeah yeah I think as
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soon as I turned 18 I like read all the books and watched all the movies and then like my sister was already into it
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she was older but um yeah we got really into Harry Potter after that and your sister was like it was like
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Emily you gota you got to you'll enjoy this cuz I I know you you also like love
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like the fantasy stuff like I did too of like Chronicles of nnia and oh yeah oh my goodness Lord of the Rings and all
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that kind of stuff okay so tell me a little bit about your homeschool Journey like were you homeschooled all the way
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through yes yeah so my mom started kind of Midway through with my brother and sister but they were so much older than
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me that she was already doing that by the time I was born and then yeah like K through 12 I was home which
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was really cool and what did like a typical like day of homeschool look like it was a lot of well my mom read out
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loud to me for a lot of things so for like history or like a lot of different subjects she would just read to me and
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then we'd like answer questions and kind of work through those um and then with
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like English and math it was mainly just workbooks so i' just go through you know
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get whatever however many pages I had to get done finished for the day and and then that was usually it and like i'
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kind of think like a lot of homeschool kids I'd be done pretty early and then
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we just have time to like like I go to the store with my mom it was like we go to Kohl's and walk around and just
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things like that like yeah there was a lot of freedom in the second half of the day usually yeah no I remember my mom
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reading us like story books and stuff when I was a kid of just like but like really cool like we did a whole year
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where we we studied like the Revolutionary War and like early America and stuff so she would read us these
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like I they were like historical you know fiction novel type stuff so it's like an adventure you know
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set with real people obviously maybe not 100% historically accurate but um but yeah I remember like and we would do it
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at night so it would be like fun like my dad would be home and we would all just
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like we didn't watch TV we just would read a book which sounds really lame looking back at it but it was actually
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really fun it's so and like we have so much fun m memories of that um one of
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the things in talking to so many people now is like I've realized like by the
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time we got to high school I feel like a lot of us were a lot more self-sufficient with like our homework
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where our parents just kind of like handed us stuff and we're like okay go do it and then just come like report
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back were your parents that way too yeah definitely like I don't feel like with
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my mom I feel like she didn't necessarily like teach me things in the sense of like a regular classroom you
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know but she would just give me the material and like I think you said it on your first episode but yeah I just work
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through it and she'd look at it and you know she kept really good records and
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graded everything and that was kind of all I really needed it it's interesting
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too because like I did I wasn't homeschooled all the way through and so so many people now that I'm talking to
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I'm like they did the whole way they did K through 12 my sister included like K
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through 12 that's all they ever knew I like granted it was only for 2 years but
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like I did understand the classroom setting and so like to go from that to like at home was so weird so now talking
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to all these people who kind of like did the at home thing for 12 11 12 to 13 years of their life and then maybe like
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went into a college setting was that like a big shock for you where you were just like oh my gosh like now I'm in the
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classroom it's like totally different I'm being lectured to like was that a
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shock or not really I'd say surprisingly not because I think I was gearing up for
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it to be more of a a big change than it ended up being but I think just being in
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co-ops like group Solutions and doing like like writing class like what we did like I think that prepared me really
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well for just being in a regular classroom setting and I ended up enjoying it a lot yeah group Solutions
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was like was dope it because it was basically yeah the collective of like parents coming together and being like
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we're going to teach classes and do classroom setting which was super cool and then yeah shout out to Mrs yip's
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writing class cuz that's I feel like that's where we became better friends um
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because our class was just hilarious um and uh you me uh Colin and Anan Lee were
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like you know the Four Musketeers um of that class and uh I think we we raised uh quite a bit of hell for Mrs Yip but
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um but when I talked to her she's always like you guys were one of my favorite
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classes so yeah those were the best times it's like well and that was like what really got me into like just even
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what I ended up majoring into because I majored in English and like just the way
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that her classes kind of prepared me for that and just taught me to write correctly you know it's like that yeah
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that was life-changing honestly see I had a mom my mom majored in English and so she had kind of taught me some of
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that like the creative writing aspects of it and like whatever but you know it's funny because even though your mom
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is your teacher or your parents are your teachers right but like it you also still have that like mentality of like
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when your mom tells you to do something you're like no I'm not going to do that
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right it's still your mom telling you to do something even if she is your teacher
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so going to a classroom like Mrs gib's classroom was like fantastic because well if Mrs Yip is telling us this is
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how we do it okay maybe there's some weight behind it now and I don't know
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about for you but for me she helped me so much with like prepping essays to get into colleges um and even like job
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applications and stuff like she just helped me understand how to not write sentences that were just boring you know
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exactly yeah the band words was like stuck with me like like all sentence openers and stuff that's
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yeah they're so yeah I still for the longest I kept it for most of college I
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had the the the sentence openers and the bandw list on my laptop and I would whenever I needed to write something I
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would pull that up and stick it in the corner and be like okay like you know got to give them some something
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different you know and it helped a lot you know it really does so did you after you graduated did you go straight into
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college or did you do community college for a while and then transition into a University or what did that look like
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yeah so I did I started with Community College at Ventura College um I did one year of that and then I took a gap year
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because I just hadn't really fully decided what I wanted to do career-wise and I just wanted to just work and kind
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of figure out what I was what my next plan was um so I worked for a year then I went back to VC for two years because
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um I'd been kind of going slow with the classes and not doing like a full load
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um then I graduated from that in 2020 which was interesting because I didn't really
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have an actual graduation or anything um and then from there because it was still
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like just in the middle of Co and like you know all the schools weren't really
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like everyone was doing it online no matter what so I just went to Channel Islands after that um and did that for
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two years and then graduated with my bachelors but yeah that was all it was interesting because that was all online
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at Chan islands like I I never physically went on the campus for my entire time there yeah which was a weird
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but um but I think that was another thing that homeschooling just kind of prepared me for because I was used to
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just you know being given material working through it you know submitting it when I needed to and yeah no that's
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so that's so wild it it's crazy because I graduated college in 2017 and so I
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still had a couple years before Co really hit and I took a few online classes but not really um and mostly
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like very basic stuff but yeah it's interesting to hear like yeah you just like you didn't set foot on and Channel
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Islands is not that far like you know it's maybe what an hour Max uh 45 minutes like 20 minutes probably it's oh
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yeah yeah from oxer I was coming from ohigh so it was a little bit you know maybe double but but yeah like yeah so
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that's funny did you even like did you walk in graduation or anything or you
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just were like hey sh me my diploma yeah that's kind of I think by the time I was
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done that was kind of my mindset I was like you know what I'm I'm done I don't
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need to go like do just this one thing so yeah that's funny well and you had no
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attachment to it because you were like I never set foot on the college campus and I had I had a few good
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friends too that kind of theyd come over from VC too so it's like I still had
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relationships and you know there's one girl that I would partner up with in all
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of our classes and stuff and so it's like there were some people but she didn't do the graduation either so I was
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like it's not really worth it yeah I feel I feel you I was since I moved for college I was like I'm already
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here I might as as well do it but you know yeah it was like a whole day of like now I have a piece of paper um you
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know well and I didn't even have a piece of paper because I still had to take
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summer classes so so it got shipped to me but yeah it was I it was special and I enjoyed it but it looking at my two
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graduations I'm like I think High School graduation was uh a little bit better
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and um yeah what's cool too is like so we were talking about like achieve and
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group Solutions and like those being our homes School group I think what was cool
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was the fact that like we did get to have a graduating class like I've met a
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couple homeschoolers now who they just the mom and dad hand him a piece of paper at the end of it and maybe Grandma
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and Grandpa come over and they go have a nice dinner or something like that but like we actually had like a physical
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graduation in a in a place capping town the whole the whole shebang so that really was like a great experience and
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then with like I think eighth grade and at least for me 8th grade and high school we did that and then there were
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all the like events with with with the other kids that were the same age you know so we go like we did our Disneyland
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trip and you know took pictures and you know went on different like scavenger hun and stuff yeah they it's cool that
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they made it try to be as close to a normal school experience as possible for a lot of us you know cuz it
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really it wasn't I mean it's all a lot of us knew but it it wasn't when now you
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talk to like a public school kid you're like what you talk like you have a locker and you you know you have like
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periods and like what like it just doesn't like I don't know it doesn't
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compute to me you know another thing that we like collectively became friends on was the fact that we were both like
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uh into swing dance and I feel like by the time you were kind of starting to come to the dances because that was like
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Junior High I think is when kids started to be allowed into like the dances and stuff um was I teaching dance class at
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that point or not quite yet yeah you were the one that taught me pretty like you and Taylor I think were the ones
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that taught me everything I know currently so yeah I still remember like that first class at her house and yeah
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that was like that became one of my favorite things ever like I still love it don't get to do it anymore pretty
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much yeah I love swing Dan yeah it's hard to find like there's a couple there's a couple groups out there that
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that do it but yeah it's not like it's not popular um by any stretch of the
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imagination I've been asking people too about like what are there any core memories that stick out about
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homeschooling whether it's like it can be a super cringy moment or it's just
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something super memorable like I I always tell people I'm like I did school at Disneyland like that was just a super
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memorable moment for me but did you have any moments like that where you're just
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like now you look back at it and you go oh my gosh like I would have never gotten to do that or oh my gosh I can't
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believe I did that uh you know from your your home school journey I feel like just like the type of classes that I
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took like at um group Solutions because U my radio theater class was probably one of my favorite ones ever and it's
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just so weird to say that I took a radio theater class you know like that was that was a pretty awesome one we'd like
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go to a studio and record different plays together and like it was that was pretty
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awesome and was that at yeah yeah we did at Mountain Dog okay very cool very cool like I don't I don't
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remember that class so like did you guys like write scripts or you guys or you guys already had kind of written stuff
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and then you were just learning the the the behind the scenes of like making a radio show I think we we kind of did
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both cuz I know we did A Christmas Carol that was one of the ones and um some other kind of like pre-written ones but
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then we also got to write our own and submit them and then they'd like decide
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who we would record so there's a little bit of both which was cool because I
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liked having the writing component of it yeah I think I did that I may have done that the same Year's guitar I think
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Poss okay okay and then you brought up mine yeah I was also a mime I think I was before your time but um but yeah how
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long did you do mime for two years yeah so it was I think it was like my last two years of high school if I'm not
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wrong but um yeah that was awesome and that's like a funny one to talk about
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cuz I feel like it's just the weirdest sounding thing if you like didn't know
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what it was before like oh yeah I used to be a m and everyone's like but um yeah that was a lot of fun like we would
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just go and perform skits like like the prominade and Ventura and you know the rescue mission all these different
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places it it became one of my like two truths and a lie if you've ever played
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that game where I would tell people like nobody believed it ever they were like a
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m what the heck is he talking about you know um and then they get to know me and
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they're like oh yeah that makes that makes sense um but yeah have you ever had anybody um
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I got this for quite a while after I graduated was like you know you meet somebody you're chitchatting whatever
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School comes up especially like those first couple years after you graduate high school you know and and I would say
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oh yeah I was like I was homeschooled and then someone would go oh that makes sense you know and it's kind of that
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like demeaning thing and you're just kind of like H dang it I I wasn't good
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at covering that up like have you had that happen to you at all I actually don't think I really have but I feel
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like it it should have happened I'm definitely on the quieter side and good awkward sometimes I feel like it it
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shows but but yeah I haven't had anyone specifically be like oh yeah you see Mom
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School sometimes being quiet is like the secret too getting away with it though because you're like you know it's just
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like you're just there you're just cool you're just chilling you know that kind
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of a thing um yeah I was much more of the like loud and proud and in yourr face with it um kind of thing I started
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telling people I went to private school because I thought it I thought it sounded better than being like Oh yeah I
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was a weirdo homeschool kid uh I mean it's not untrue I think was a private school technically so so now that you
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are like you've been a couple years removed from like being a homeschooler we talk about this before we it's been
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eight years for you which is insane it's been decade for me and like you know now
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like you have your degree like are you are you using your degree in your job and stuff now or what what are you doing
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careerwise yeah I kind of am um so I work on a software company and I write contracts for them and then I'm also
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like my technical role as sales support specialist so I kind of help the sales people and then when they need a
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contract for a client I'll write the contract so they were specifically looking for people with English degrees
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for that job which I thought was interesting but I think they just really wanted someone with a good grasp on
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writing and grammar and catching little mistakes and things and so in that way I
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use it but it's not I'm not like a yeah like I feel like everyone when I said I
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was an English major they're like oh so you're going to be a teacher right and I
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was like no I don't want to be a teacher so it kind of I don't know worked out
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with this and yeah I've been doing that like I I got the job before I graduated
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college and then I started right when I graduated so I've been doing that for
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about two years now and is that like I mean obviously it's a job but like do
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you have any um like dreams of like oh I want to do this like I want to be a creative writer or I want to like you
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know is there anything like that that you want to do or you're just like you
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know it's good I like it I mean honestly like I feel like it's I don't know it's like
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weird to say this but um no I I just want to be a mom I think ultimately like like in the long term I think I I
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basically want to do what my mom did you know it's like have have kids homeschool
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them all the way through and just kind of be there for them be a homem maker and I'm getting into all the like
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sourdough and kind of tradwife stuff lately and I've really been enjoying that so just kind of leaning into that
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more I think I've never been like a huge career-minded person I would say and hey
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that's totally I mean mom is a career within itself it is like the toughest job um you know and that's super cool
00:19:05
you know and like I I was you know one of the things too that I have been asking people is like you know if you do
00:19:12
become a parent you know and or you have homeschooled parents approach you and ask you about like oh should we
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homeschool our kids you know or or we're thinking about it or anything like that
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like uh is that something you're leaning towards like with your with your kid
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like you would be like oh yeah I want to homeschool them and all the way through
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or maybe part of the way through or have you put any thought into that yeah definitely and I think at this point we
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definitely want to hes School them all the way through like yeah I I want them to have as much as possible kind of the
00:19:41
childhood that I did because I think it worked really well for me and yeah that's I definitely want to home school
00:19:47
all the way through and I'd say I have nothing but positive things to say about
00:19:50
it just from my own experiences yeah that's super cool cuz like I like I I think that I highly encourage
00:20:00
parents to like just be involved in their kids education I think that's what
00:20:04
made a lot of us like really good at what we do right and just like passionate about certain things was like
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we had parents who obviously cared about what we were learning and so regardless
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of if you're kid is public schooled private schooled homeschooled like being
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involved in your kids's education is like I think is massive and then supporting them with like whatever their
00:20:24
interests are right like whatever they want to pursue creatively or you know they it it goes a long way um
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you know and and being there involved in your kids life and obviously not every parent has the luxury of being a
00:20:39
stay-at-home parent but like it's okay if you can't be you know you can still
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be heavily involved in your kids life and and be there for them but cuz I remember like even it's funny because I
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feel like some of the hom School dads I don't feel like we're around a whole
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heck of a lot but I remember seeing your dad quite a bit at stuff oh yeah he definitely he he was my ride a
00:21:01
lot of times and he' I remember he'd come like on the last day at group Solutions and that was always like a big
00:21:06
deal for me because I'm like oh he gets to see all my classes and we put up our
00:21:10
boards and stuff and he'd come look at him and yeah he was he was very involved
00:21:14
even though like he worked fulltime but he was when he could he he was always there and that that's good was he
00:21:19
involved too in like the actual like dayto Day stuff like I mean obviously he went to work but like was he helping
00:21:27
your mom like pick up curriculum and and things along those lines or he served more of like my dad in early years
00:21:33
served us like he was the principal but then my mom was like the one really run in the show uh a lot of the times but
00:21:40
you know was he involved at all like with that kind of stuff I'm not sure actually just as far as like the
00:21:45
decision- making on curriculum how how much of a role he played in that but um I'd say for the most part it was my mom
00:21:52
but obviously he supported you know her decision to homeschool and you know it was all for that and he would like he
00:21:59
was another one he would read to me too like at night when he'd be at home and
00:22:03
that was that was a really fond memory too but yeah i' say mainly my mom but my
00:22:07
dad was definitely present for it all too well when you said so like you have two older siblings um and they were
00:22:15
homeschooled part of the way through um and so did you ever feel like you know oh they were lucky like they got to go
00:22:22
to public school for a while or were they telling you like no no no it's like
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so much better at home like yeah yeah it was more of that cuz I think I think the
00:22:30
reason my mom started homeschooling was because I think they were I want to say they went from private school to home
00:22:36
school I could be wrong but um it became just so stressful like I know for my sister she had like a teacher that was
00:22:43
really mean and just as a little you know probably eight or nine year- old girl she was like you know just so
00:22:49
stressed out every day to the point of like being sick even and like I think my mom saw that and was like okay like
00:22:55
we're we're not doing this anymore and then she pulled both out and started
00:22:59
homeschooling but but yeah so I I never really felt like oh I want that like I wish I could have you know had that
00:23:06
experience because because I always like I think from probably the time I was six
00:23:11
maybe I was always part of a co-op or some kind of class where there was just that social element to it so I never
00:23:17
felt like oh I wish I could go to class and see my friends because like I still got to do that so yeah absolutely no I
00:23:23
mean those came in so clutch right it was just like one of those things where it's like I if uh if we didn't have
00:23:30
group Solutions and like I don't I don't think my family did group solutions for
00:23:34
like the first two years um and so it was like really stressful it was really hard to like be at home all the time
00:23:41
with just Mom and like I'm a little bit more of a home body now like I I'm an
00:23:46
introvert so I'm like that 5050 I got a little bit of extrovert I lean a little
00:23:50
bit more towards the introverted side um so you know but when you're at home all
00:23:56
all the time it's like you just kind of go stir crazy you know Co taught that
00:24:00
for a lot of people was it was just like even just like the ability to just not go outside was like oh my god um but uh
00:24:07
but yeah things like group Solutions came in so clutch because it was just like okay I have friends and I get to
00:24:12
see them every two weeks or I get to see them every week or you know things like
00:24:16
skate day was like super important for a lot of us you know and and the dances and like all those things so I
00:24:22
appreciate all of our parents giving us the opportunity to be in community because you know I think that's the
00:24:28
biggest one of the biggest misconceptions when it comes to homeschool kids is like we don't have
00:24:33
friends you know it's your family and that's it yeah and I'd say that's
00:24:37
definitely like wasn't the case at all growing up it's like I always just had
00:24:41
you know some kind of community that we were part of and then with church too of
00:24:44
course like we had that side of it and I had I always had friends coming over too
00:24:48
and like yeah I think that made all the difference and I'm hoping when I when
00:24:52
I'm homeschooling my own kids too that similar things will be in place I'm not
00:24:56
sure how CH is doing at this point or if it's still going but um yeah just having
00:25:02
something like that where you know my kids could also have that community and things still look forward to and you
00:25:07
know fun events to be a part of okay I gotta ask are there any super cringy stories that you can think
00:25:15
of for me I mean the reason I brought up the One Direction thing was mostly because of the fact that like I did show
00:25:21
up wearing bright red pants and like a striped t-shirt and like very much dressing like One Direction in the early
00:25:26
days and looking back at that I'm like oh my God that's so embarrassing um and
00:25:31
I'm going to try to find the the picture and post it so people can see it because
00:25:35
it is it's cringe um you look normal in that photo I look awful in that photo
00:25:42
yeah but then in the subsequent photos from other weeks I definitely wore suspenders at one
00:25:48
point definitely that like that kind of thing though I feel like the way I dressed which is such a like typical
00:25:53
homeschooler thing that I I did not care what people thought and I think it showed for a
00:25:59
while it's crazy too because like I don't know about you but homeschooling
00:26:04
also gave me like so many lifelong friends that I still talk to to this day and um do you have anybody like that
00:26:12
that you're still like pretty connected with even if it's not on like a daily
00:26:15
basis but you you still chat with them quite a bit yeah definitely so Kira I don't know if you remember her she was
00:26:22
kind of younger but she's my best friend like we've especially during Co like we
00:26:26
started just calling each other every week she loves in Ohio so we're not even
00:26:29
like in the same state but yeah we we call every week and keep up with each other and yeah and she's I think we
00:26:36
we've known each other for over 10 years I think at this point and yeah that's that's been a huge
00:26:43
friendship for me and then um like Esther and Sarah I don't know if you remember them too like they're we still
00:26:49
keep up like Esther was in my wedding and Kira was too and so yeah definitely those people an and Le like she's
00:26:57
awesome and yeah lots of good connections still that's good because yeah I I think that
00:27:03
it's like it's one of those things where you don't always realize like oh I'm
00:27:08
making a lifelong friend and then you sit down and like it's been a decade right and it's like oh my gosh I'm still
00:27:14
friends with this person and like and then also people who maybe you didn't think you would maybe you weren't as
00:27:19
good of friends with they come back into your life and all of a sudden you're
00:27:22
like oh my God like now we're like best friends um which has been fun too to
00:27:26
like reconnect with people and be like oh my gosh like we have so much more in common than we did back in the day and
00:27:31
like we can chat and we can share stories and find out what's going on in life and it's just been fantastic you
00:27:38
know it's like one of those things that it it keeps giving right yeah so true
00:27:42
I'm trying to think of other cringy stories or other just things that we were involved in um I I mean it's funny
00:27:50
I was I think it was the year I graduated um you me Colin and anal went and did we have a a gigantic photo shoot
00:27:59
that we did at the beach um it's super cringey I'm gonna find more of those
00:28:03
photos too to post that still like it haunts my Facebook memories every year it comes back up and I don't think I
00:28:11
feel like you and Anan Le definitely understood a little bit more about like photography and posing and things like
00:28:17
that Colin and I we had no clue what the heck was going on um but it is like the
00:28:22
wildest uh group of photos but like I know you were really big into photography are you still are you still
00:28:27
doing photog graphy and stuff sometimes yeah like I I do a lot of like like when
00:28:32
we have like birthday parties for my nieces and nephews and stuff I'll always
00:28:35
like take all the family photos for that and like every Christmas I'll do one
00:28:39
with the whole family and I do a little bit of nature photography too I've kind
00:28:42
of not been doing that as much but but yeah still sometimes well super cool I appreciate you coming on and chatting
00:28:49
with me so much I love like I love catching up with everybody because it's just like it's so cool to see where
00:28:55
everybody's lives have taken them and like you know we're just like we're
00:29:01
adults now which is weird I never you know when you're when you're 12 years
00:29:04
old you're not thinking that oh someday I'm going to still know these people
00:29:07
when I'm in my mid 20s but um but here we are yeah really is crazy that's super cool well thank you
00:29:16
again for thanks for coming on once again and uh if you enjoyed the show consider subscribing following uh
00:29:23
leaving a rating comment any of the good stuff you know what to do and uh Emily this has been fantastic and you know
00:29:30
let's let's stay in touch much more than we have cuz it's been like I don't know
00:29:34
six seven years at this point and uh that is unacceptable oh for sure yeah let definitely stay in touch all right well
00:29:43
this has been fun thank you so much oh thank you [Music]