00:00:04
all right all right all right we are back in the ex homeschool club today I am of course your host Jacob Gooden and
00:00:09
today I am joined by my friend Elizabeth uh we have known each other for I feel like I've known your family for a very
00:00:17
long time I knew your brother John probably before you um but you were a few years younger than I was more better
00:00:25
friends with my sister probably but um I'm just GNA say right now as of as of
00:00:30
the recording of this you have been the biggest fan of the podcast so far and so
00:00:33
I for sure um but uh but you have an interesting homeschool story and I wanted to
00:00:40
highlight it so you know give me a little something were you what what did your homes School
00:00:46
Journey look like was it all the way through um you know tell me tell me a little bit about it right so I was I
00:00:55
have uh two other biological siblings uh that were I I think they're were both
00:01:00
homeschooled all the way through I'm the youngest by a lot um and then I have two
00:01:04
adopted siblings that became homeschooled but I was homeschooled from the very beginning up until the age of
00:01:09
16 when I was a junior in high school and that's when I started doing a bunch
00:01:15
of different things other than just like straight homeschooling so was that because you
00:01:21
were like I I mean we talked beforehand a little bit about this you were starting to do college courses you were
00:01:27
doing some extracurricular stuff that required you to do uh to actually be like in you you're one of the lucky ones
00:01:32
you got to go to public school a little bit even though it was independent study
00:01:35
but um what did that like transition kind of look like what was what what all was going on right um I I can't remember
00:01:44
the exact reasons why I started to do all these types of schools so the story was like I wanted to do track and field
00:01:53
and cross country and what better way to do that through than through a public school um so I kind of tried out at my
00:02:02
local high school and I remember the girls were a little bit catty so then I tried another high school and um in
00:02:08
order to be on the team I had to be in the public school system so I started doing independent studies and the
00:02:15
independent studies was at the community college Oxnard Community College which I
00:02:21
was already going to at the time so it was kind of just like a perfect fit the high school was across the street so I
00:02:28
would go to my classes and then walk over go to my track and field practice and um for a little bit I was doing the
00:02:36
whole Community College Public School track and Fields independent studies and homeschooling and then that was just too
00:02:44
much for me so I dropped the homeschooling bit and um I ended up graduating from um the independent
00:02:51
studies system which is the public school system um and I'm really grateful I did because the principal really liked
00:03:00
me and she uh articulated all of my homeschool courses to uh public school like codes so my transcript uh was in
00:03:12
the format that was really nice to apply for universities um and I feel like that
00:03:18
really gave me a leg up because I was so worried about that uh in high school yeah that's one of the biggest fears I
00:03:25
think a lot of homeschoolers have especially once that are looking to go to college right afterwards is like what
00:03:31
does the transcript thing look like and I know even for parents it's like it was
00:03:34
worrisome like how does it get formatted and how this that and the other and it's
00:03:38
like you know it's a lot of I mean I had a conversation with my mom the other
00:03:42
week and I was asking her this stuff and she's like it's a whole education within
00:03:45
itself to try to figure out how to like format all this stuff and you know home schools in California are recognized as
00:03:52
private schools so their legitimate uh you know education system but yeah it's
00:03:58
like getting everything right for the college level is like is is wild and I remember even when applying for college
00:04:06
maybe you had this too was like they would they would be like oh we also need this form or we need this other little
00:04:12
thing like I mean you kind of got lucky because you had some of that transition for you in high school but right it it
00:04:18
was really it was a hard transition though because I remember getting ready to start doing the whole process of
00:04:26
applying to University and my parents um I was I think the only kid that they were really like willing to let go to
00:04:35
university straight out of high school because I was super passionate about what I wanted to study and so they were
00:04:41
like okay you don't have to do the two years of Community College and get your
00:04:44
AA like you can just like go do straight shot to University um but I remember preparing all that like the SAT the act
00:04:53
that was the first time I was in a public school classroom and I remember walking on the campus and just like fear
00:05:00
rolling over me because it was like a dungeon like the gates are like a prison they like lock them you have to check in
00:05:07
office and I was so dismal and I'm like just shivering in my little chair they're so tiny with all these other
00:05:14
students I was like oh my gosh this what people do every day I I love hearing that from somebody else because yeah I
00:05:20
just I felt the same way like I and I did the multiple times I'm sure you probably did as well and I did the
00:05:27
act because I I had start of also looking at outside of uh like going outside of the state for for college
00:05:35
which is what I ended up doing but like and so act is accepted at a lot more out
00:05:39
of state colleges sat was like big for California schools but um yeah but I remember going in and just being like I
00:05:47
I remember yeah being so freaked out and then every I felt like everybody else knew each other and so breaks would come
00:05:51
and I was just the odd man out and it just standing there eating my little snack while we're on break for 10
00:05:57
minutes or whatever between seconds and just like oh my gosh like and and feeling dumb the entire time too just
00:06:03
feeling like I I don't have this like you know yeah I wanted to like I remember my mom took me to like Olive
00:06:10
Garden or like some soup kitchen afterwards and I just wanted to puke because it was just such an overwhelming
00:06:16
experience to be in the environment I feel like I wish I was just like taken through a tour of the school first and
00:06:23
then like my testing experience would have been better I'm sure like all the
00:06:26
public school kids were like also freaking out but at least used to sitting in that classroom it was
00:06:32
just so crazy like I I remember for track and field was the first time I was on a public school campus and I had
00:06:39
never seen like all the lockers it was like a movie I was like so this is what goes on like I I like couldn't stop
00:06:47
staring at everything and I was just like a sore thumb sticking out yeah no I I feel you because even though I had
00:06:56
gone to public school previously I it had been so long since that it was complet it was so different for me um so
00:07:03
yeah like first grade going to public school is like way different than going in high SCH right um and uh oh my gosh
00:07:10
it's like foreign um but yeah I agree like having a walk through and then like
00:07:15
I mean tests to are just like in general no fun right and then also you're taking
00:07:18
a test that is going to help dictate what colleges you get into that's stressful and I I'm thankful my mom put
00:07:26
me in a critical thinking class before I took these tests because the SAT the ACT
00:07:33
not as not quite as much but the SAT is like critical theory based testing so you don't actually have to know the
00:07:40
answer like you don't actually have to know math science like you just know how
00:07:44
have to know how to look at a question and determine what the answer is not um right so I was thankful she did that
00:07:51
because yeah there was a lot of things that I was like I am not smart enough to know what this is yeah but okay I don't
00:07:58
know if this is just me that was my first time taking a standardized test and I had never used a Scantron before
00:08:03
so the Scantron was even like terrifying to me I was like oh my God there's so
00:08:08
many bubbles like what is this but yeah I I think I had done a couple in the past I remember doing them in grade
00:08:15
school a few times and I think it mostly was I know within the Homeschool Group or some Homeschool Group in California
00:08:21
they did offer some standardized testing so I wasn't totally shooken sh shth I wasn't shook
00:08:30
by that um but yeah I think it mostly had to do with my mom just wanted to make sure I was in the right grades you
00:08:37
know um yeah yeah yeah and being held back in the place I need to be held back and pushed forward in the other places
00:08:42
but um but anyway we made it through we we accomplished we did it we both un yes yeah and uh yeah so you skipped
00:08:55
right into no no Community College which yeah like you said is pretty St I did a
00:08:59
couple of classes yeah um at 16 but not the full two years like the standard homeschool mode was at the time so I
00:09:09
mean I just didn't get my AA but I did like 16 17 and then a little bit of 18
00:09:15
okay so and then you ended up going you went to UC Davis is that right yeah and did you know right off the bat what you
00:09:22
wanted to study yeah I applied to Davis because they had a major that I really really wanted to do um when I was 12
00:09:32
I was I started to become crazy about um infectious diseases specifically parasites and I just read as many books
00:09:42
as I could and then it grew so it started like macro like parasites and then it was bacteria and then viruses so
00:09:48
I was just crazy about all those pathogens um so Davis had a global disease biology major and I'm like
00:09:58
that's for me I'm G to graduate from Davis and then I'm G to go to med school
00:10:02
and I'm G to specialize in um tropical medicine like infectious diseases and so
00:10:07
that that was the plan initially I mean you obviously followed through somewhat with the plan but where did where did
00:10:13
that plan change oh my gosh well the plan changed when I got to Davis and I was just like holy crap everything is
00:10:21
really difficult it's it's I think any school in science is difficult but the
00:10:28
uc's are are brutal and um the science and math classes like as most of us know
00:10:35
they're weer courses and they want you to fail and so that was like a huge slap
00:10:40
in the face for me and coming into college from being homeschooled the adjustment was really difficult and I
00:10:49
don't think that I necessarily had a good gauge for like balancing everything
00:10:55
um but I think realistically though the biggest reason why I just decided not to
00:10:59
go down that path was because I was like I like path the pathogens more than the
00:11:04
people and I feel like if you want to go to med school you should definitely like
00:11:07
people more than do like the diseases and like the pathogenesis and stuff like that so and I and I heard had heard that
00:11:15
you have to study Insurance in med school and I'm like nah and it was just too much school it was too much school
00:11:22
yeah too much I I feel that it so you talk about feeling like maybe a little like under prepared for like being in a
00:11:31
college classroom and like was that because I I don't know if your parents were this way my parents were kind of
00:11:37
this way for a little while was that like you kind of you would learn something till you actually got it and
00:11:44
so there was no like the first time I got a D was in college I had never gotten a d before that because anytime I
00:11:50
did get a d i could just go back and redo it um because the way my parents had decided to teach me was well you're
00:11:57
just going to redo it redo it redo it until you actually know what you're talking about so when it get to college
00:12:02
and all of a sudden it was like you got a D well shoot you know that sucks um and then you get a c in this class and
00:12:10
you're like okay that's not good you know what does that mean and I'm going
00:12:13
and I'm begging with the professor like give me extra credit was it something
00:12:16
along those cuz I just felt unprepared to like I didn't understand that it's
00:12:20
like once the grade was given there was really no change in it kind of a thing yeah I think it had to do with a lot of
00:12:26
different things honestly I think it had to do the fact that like you could work
00:12:30
on something as a homeschooler as long as you needed until you got it correctly which is a great thing to learn but it's
00:12:37
also good to learn like hey I need help more help for this than I can like do myself um so you know getting help from
00:12:47
a tutor was something that was really hard for me because I was so used to just sitting there and being really
00:12:51
perseverant on something and you just don't have that type of time in college
00:12:57
um I also felt really isolated and I felt kind of stupid for asking for help just because I didn't know what level I
00:13:05
was at compared to like you know other students and um it was like hard to say like oh like
00:13:15
I don't know this because I just expected that everybody knew it because there was just no gauge of like oh what
00:13:20
do people know and people like not know um and then I think the last component of it was just that you know I don't
00:13:30
feel like I was prepared well in the math and sciences just the way that my homeschooling Journey worked and um I
00:13:38
think that's one of the biggest things I like tell people that have kids that are
00:13:42
thinking about homeschooling is just like hey like if your kid is like mathematically or scientifically
00:13:49
inclined um and you are not super familiar with those subjects like you know get make sure you're getting a
00:13:55
tutor make sure you're like taking your kid to a class like that's not just
00:13:59
taught by you you know um because teachers are taught how to teach and um so many kids learn differently and I
00:14:09
just feel like I would have benefited a lot if I had been taken out of like the home and taught math and science
00:14:16
separately starting at an earlier age yeah um do you think that had to do mostly
00:14:23
with maybe it not being your mom's strong suit of science and math or was it also a choice of like the curriculum
00:14:30
that was used where I know for me I had a lot of faith based curriculum and so there's a lot of things in there where
00:14:35
it's like when I got to college and all a sudden I was in college level science
00:14:38
I was like I was hating my life because I felt dumb too because I was like I only know a Christian viewpoint on
00:14:46
science I didn't know what evolution looked like um so was it a mix of those
00:14:51
or or mainly one of those you know I think it's a mix of those I mean we did
00:14:55
have the co-op classes for group Solutions right like I met remember Mr Panzer is like an oceanographer and so
00:15:00
he has a science back he was a great science teacher love him um and I I did learn a lot from those classes but
00:15:07
you're right the apologia textbooks uh you know that are mostly faith-based I they are good in certain aspects but
00:15:15
they really don't prepare you I think um and you know I I try to remain neutral
00:15:23
too because I'm like you know I was never in public school maybe public school doesn't prepare you either you
00:15:27
know we all struggle in college but I do remember I think Derry mentioned this and you might have
00:15:32
mentioned this that like when I got to college and I was learning about Evolution oh my gosh I just was so quiet
00:15:38
in those classes cuz I was struggling really hard I'm like I only have this one perspective and I'm afraid if I say
00:15:47
anything people are going to be like pointing fingers at me being like Oh my gosh like do you even believe in
00:15:53
science um and in retrospect I oh I have I kind of have an issue with those apology textbooks because I don't think
00:16:02
you need to be shoving faith in every single paragraph like they did um I think it has a place but I think they
00:16:10
should be separate and um not so intertwined you know yeah I I feel that I think I I even I went to a Christian
00:16:22
college so I I you did not go to Christian college so I can't even imagine that level of like I already
00:16:29
felt dumb compared to some of the kids I was with but like I at least had this kind of like background of like I knew
00:16:35
that for the most part of the majority of people who were there also believe the same thing I did maybe believed kind
00:16:41
of the same scientific side of things I did but yeah when I got into science class oh my God I have science from
00:16:46
religion class and it was kind of what you're talking about it was like the intersection of Science and uh Faith
00:16:53
right and but he would he but he also could separate them and say hey when you look at it just scientifically there's
00:16:59
all these different options and they're all you know hypothesis and theories and
00:17:04
whatever else right if like we have all these options over here and then here's
00:17:08
faith and here's how they intersect right and here's how we can explain this
00:17:12
and this and it all coexists in the same thing and I think that was something that like you said with the apology of
00:17:17
science books it's like this is the way and this is the only way or at least
00:17:21
that's the way to presented this is the way literally only way yeah it's
00:17:25
literally just a textbook to teach you how to defend your faith it's not a specific science textbook like yes um
00:17:35
which I have a problem with because if you're studying math you're just studying math like if you're studying
00:17:38
science you should just be studying science and then you can have your own Bible class you can have your own
00:17:42
apologetics class and I I have no problems I I still don't know where I stand with Evolution sometimes I'm like
00:17:48
oh creationism and then oh like you know the science super scientific point of view um but
00:17:56
yeah that's funny I remember remember getting to college and I started watching uh what's the what's the guy's
00:18:04
name uh Bill Nye the Science Guy I just videos on YouTube and I just started watching them um and like and then Neil
00:18:13
degrass Tyson as well like just like watching their videos to try to understand science from a totally
00:18:18
different perspective because I I just grew up Ken Ham was the Science Guy The Creation Guy and um and my favorite
00:18:27
thing I think it came out when I was in college but uh Bill NY went to the ark uh that
00:18:33
kenam has built somewhere been there have you I think it's in Kentucky I don't know I think it's in Kentucky yeah
00:18:42
okay um so yeah super not super far from me but uh uh yeah he went and basically
00:18:49
they debated as they walked through this Museum that is built like the arc from the Bible of like oh yeah your plaque
00:18:56
says this but you know it's actually this right and they have their back and
00:18:59
forth and I thought that was so interesting because I was like I stood with Ken Ham for so long of like this is
00:19:05
this is the truth um and then to watch things get torn apart I was like oh maybe maybe not um right kind of a thing
00:19:14
so it's it's interesting I again I wasn't even a science major so I can't
00:19:19
even imagine being where the majority of my classes are going to be science classes um yeah you know where it's just
00:19:26
completely different than you were used yeah and you know I think a lot of like um my fears going to college was
00:19:35
like oh I'm going to be like picked out from the crowd and like oh no like they're going to know that I was raised
00:19:41
thinking this way and I just I didn't know what I thought at the time because
00:19:45
I was in all these classes but it was a relatively I would say small part of my entire curriculum like you know once you
00:19:52
get through the basic uh General Ed science courses you get a focus on what you want so it wasn't a super huge part
00:19:59
of U my education but I do remember it being like a big thing when I was like a freshman and a sophomore how do you feel
00:20:07
about like it you talk about also feeling kind of singled out in the crowd whether that's like just you you putting
00:20:15
that on yourself too but yeah like you know uh Dar and I talked about like you could smell the homeschooler on on you
00:20:23
like did you feel like you were that or um I know sometimes that has to do with just like the social skill that had I
00:20:30
mean we were more social kids just in because we had things like group Solutions and
00:20:35
Achi but uh but yeah I don't know did that did that play any kind of role for
00:20:42
you where you felt just kind of like oh yeah I definitely did it I felt it more in uh Community College I I remember
00:20:52
everybody else went to Ventura College and I was like oh my God like all my friends are over there but I have to go
00:20:58
to Oxnard College because it's just way closer I live in Oxnard and I had wanted
00:21:04
to go start taking math and science classes at the age of 14 and my parents wouldn't let me and I totally understand
00:21:11
where they're coming from um but finally at 16 I was allowed to go and I like yes
00:21:15
I get to take biology I get to take math and all these classes that i' had been
00:21:19
wanting to take chemistry um and I remember very vividly like sitting in the library and
00:21:29
staring at people just staring at people I don't know like cuz I just felt like
00:21:34
they were so different like it was the first time where I was just like in an environment by myself and
00:21:43
just like supposed to be studying and being like a little mini adult and I remember this guy he noticed I was
00:21:50
staring at him and he like he got one of the library attendants and like pointed
00:21:55
at me I was like I just like kind of like shook out of it but I I don't know it was just like a whole
00:22:01
new world for me and it's you know I'm making myself sound like I didn't go
00:22:04
outside like I had I was in Scouts I was in group Solutions I you know did a bunch of
00:22:12
other stuff but it was uh I think it was because I was by myself you know I like
00:22:17
I was like 16 my labmates were like 32 and I'm just like oh my gosh like what
00:22:24
the heck yeah no it is very different because well especially Community College too is is is different as well
00:22:32
because when you get to a 4-year University you kind of you're with people your age right A lot of times
00:22:39
yeah and and yes of course there's the people who are older and every now and
00:22:42
then there's a person who's kind of younger who's kind of has has gotten in
00:22:45
there too but like for the most part you're in there with people who are like
00:22:48
your own age where yeah like in Community College you get the you know the mom who she didn't finish her degree
00:22:54
and now she's in her 30s and she's trying to she's trying to make a better
00:22:57
life for herself or she just wants to get her education you know or whatever um and so yeah you have that vast
00:23:03
variety of people um that I just wasn't used to my sister did Community College
00:23:10
and she would come home and she would talk tell about her labmates and stuff and then it would turn out it was like a
00:23:14
42y old man and I was like oh yeah what like what are you talking about you know
00:23:18
I'm like I was just used to everyone around me for my classes was you know there was maybe a three-year age
00:23:24
difference between us at Max um and every very rarely was it like a 10e age difference uh oh yeah so um so yeah
00:23:33
that's that's kind of funny the I don't know I I feel you though on the on the
00:23:39
needing to stare and needing to kind of like feel it out a little bit because oh
00:23:43
yeah you know in addition I imagine U Davis is not crazy far from home uh obviously you were still in California I
00:23:52
moved from California to Illinois so I also in addition to that I'm I'm stuck
00:23:57
there you know it's it's like I'm like I make it's sink or swim at that point
00:24:01
it's like I make friends or I'm just going to be that weird guy who's yeah
00:24:05
you know in his room goes to dinner alone that kind of thing uh and so just kind of had to push myself to be like I
00:24:12
gotta be I got to be out there and I got to be a part of the group um as well so
00:24:18
oh yeah I I definitely pushed myself super socially too and then I was like oh my gosh the introvert started coming
00:24:23
in and I remember experiencing like so much social anxiety because the classrooms are huge they're yes huge uh
00:24:30
uh State School uh UC school and I was just like that was just another overwhelming part I don't know if you
00:24:36
experienced that too I don't know how big your school was but it was not very
00:24:40
big I think our school totaled couple maybe I don't know a thousand students a little over a
00:24:47
thousand students so classroom sizes were not massive but I also had done that because I strategically I knew that
00:24:55
I was going to struggle at a really big school because I needed a little more one-on-one attention with professors and
00:25:01
tutors and stuff like that uh and then I also chose the Christian aspect because
00:25:06
that was that was at the time that was important to me um and so it was yeah it was I needed that and I needed
00:25:14
classrooms of like five people every now and then and yeah there was classroom of
00:25:17
50 students sometimes but a good number of times it was like Max 20 kids in a classroom which is a lot more manageable
00:25:24
you know it felt like group soltions right it was like okay this like a group solution setting um and I did want to
00:25:31
kind of like backtrack a little bit uh because like you said you were homeschooled all the way to 16 so that
00:25:39
is a long time um and I obviously you were involved in a lot of the same kind of things I was involved in with achieve
00:25:47
and group Solutions and things like that was that always the case or did you also
00:25:51
have years where you just remember feeling like I'm stuck at home it's also
00:25:56
all you ever knew uh oh yeah yeah um I mean I had been in group SS my whole life and we started uh
00:26:07
scouting when I was eight my mom started a American Heritage Girls uh scouting group in our city um and you know I went
00:26:15
to youth group and I I think I've heard this a lot from other homeschoolers too
00:26:20
I do wish I did sports like as a child and all the way throughout because I feel like I would have been really good
00:26:25
at them um so I feel like that aspect was missing but yeah I I felt really isolated if I'm going to be honest my
00:26:34
whole childhood um and I just wanted like you know you see people every two weeks for
00:26:40
group Solutions was it or something like that yeah just not enough not enough yeah I I feel that I I I get that
00:26:48
feeling and also keep in mind y oh sorry I my siblings are like way older than me
00:26:56
my brother's like eight years older than me I think my sister's like 13 years
00:26:59
older than me and uh my adopted siblings came in when I was around 8 years old but they went to public school for a
00:27:07
while for a long while wow yeah so that that also was yeah that's a hard shift
00:27:13
there too because like at least with my siblings or with my sibling uh it was a three-year difference and even when my
00:27:20
family was adopting uh which didn't end up working out but they were right around our age
00:27:27
well we had a three-year-old and then we had like an 11year old uh and I was like
00:27:30
13 at the time so but they were right around our ages as well but yeah I never I'm the oldest so I never had anybody
00:27:36
that was so drastically further than me um in life you know uh so that's also
00:27:43
like a weird there's an isolation to that as well like you said yeah and like
00:27:49
I feel like nobody liked coming to Oxnard too like there's the people in Ventura and there's like the small group
00:27:55
of people in oxar like okay Jose who my best friend Jose Lopez you interv interviewed Laura um yeah they lived in
00:28:02
Oxnard and that was like oh my safe place uh but there was a period of time where we didn't hang out actually and
00:28:08
then other than that there was like very few people who lived in O I felt like it
00:28:12
was just like the place that people don't want to go except for group solution you know I think I think you're
00:28:18
right I mean I grew up I yeah I grew up in ohigh so it was like Oxnard was Far first of all yes but then it was in by
00:28:26
far it's 30 minutes away it's like nothing um but it's far you know and
00:28:33
yeah and then it was kind of sketchy when when I was oh yeah so it was it was not a safe place to just like go all the
00:28:39
time uh but I don't know it's a little different now the last time I was in Oxnard I was
00:28:45
like it feels so much better here you know I I agree I grew up in a very sketchy neighborhood so I could totally
00:28:51
watch for I understand why people didn't want to come but I was still like guys
00:28:56
please come like I'm no yeah no it's funny that you say you grew up in a
00:29:00
sketchy neighborhood I literally grew up next to a drug dealer watch him get busted OD all that kind of like just you
00:29:06
know I'm like stuff happened in my neighborhood too so it's not like ohigh
00:29:09
was all that much safer uh to be very honest but uh but yeah that's hilarious anyway but one of the things
00:29:18
you brought up to me when we were kind of pre-interview and and chatting about topics was that you were a part of the
00:29:25
video production team that was group Solutions right oh yeah yes okay tell me a little bit about that cuz I never did
00:29:32
that um okay but I I remember watching somebody's short video at some point oh
00:29:39
no yeah we were a group we were a club but it was technically a class at group Solutions and it was uh Mrs Burns's
00:29:48
class so uh that whole Burns family Clan was totally involved in that and you know there was people like Emily Aldrich
00:29:57
and Colin suers and Caleb saard and we took this class for years I I think I started when I was like 12 and
00:30:06
then I stopped when I left so like at 15 16 and it was one of the best experiences at
00:30:15
homeschooling was making films with my friends we would just spend hours uh like having film days and doing the
00:30:22
weirdest scripts we'd all write scripts and um you know I was the makeup uh person I was a costume person I did a
00:30:31
bunch of different things I did editing um it was a great group and Fun Stuff very embarrassing films though they
00:30:38
they're not good but yeah yeah no I I feel that I only ever made one movie and
00:30:45
that was for my mom taught a uh I'm trying to remember if it was American literature or what it was but
00:30:51
we made a fulllength movie of a of a was that like the three hour one the three-hour movie and I talked
00:30:58
about on our episode yeah that was yeah super cringy so um you guys were way better at editing and doing all that
00:31:05
kind of stuff than we ever were but yeah I I forgot who all was in that group so
00:31:10
yeah when you brought up names I was like oh my gosh I I remember these things now Colin and I were like we were
00:31:16
like doing stuff together Emily Kira Hatton we were Nick Schneider um these were like my closest
00:31:25
friends we just have such good memories together and we like we were so serious that's the thing we were serious I was
00:31:32
looking through my emails the other day and we'd have email chains we'd have
00:31:35
spreadsh sheets you know I would tell this person to bring that and someone would tell me to do this and we were
00:31:40
like on it especially Colin man Colin was just and and he's still likeed that
00:31:45
today I'm pretty sure just that director producer mindset you know yeah well
00:31:51
Colin now works in the film in the TV film industry so um yeah I'm trying to
00:31:57
get him on the show because yeah I want to pick his brain on on all that stuff um but the last I talked to him I was
00:32:02
like your job sounds awesome uh but uh yeah well that's super cool I'm glad it
00:32:09
feels like every homeschool kid kind of had there was some overlapping of like obviously a lot of us had similar
00:32:14
extracurriculars but uh but then there was also like these really unique ones as well and I know another one that we
00:32:21
shared was of course swing dancing and you continue to swing dance to this day um and I told you before we got on
00:32:28
pretty sure you have far surpassed what I could ever do um but uh but yeah I'm
00:32:34
I'm trying to remember was I ever your swing dance instructor you know I honestly I don't
00:32:42
remember did the dances that well like I didn't remember liking it like liking
00:32:47
dancing that much and I honestly I didn't remember the basic steps like I started last April and I was like at
00:32:54
like zero uh so I I think I mostly remembered like the social interactions and like the pizzazz of getting ready
00:33:02
for dance but you definitely probably were my swing instructor to be honest it's very possible I know I was for your
00:33:10
two younger siblings I remember that I was I also was going through emails and I had an email chain from your mom
00:33:17
asking if they could come even though at the time they weren't homeschool kids or
00:33:22
something like that and I was like yeah so you definitely were you definitely were it's very possible so yeah you
00:33:28
forgetting is not on me though uh I must not have been super memorable but uh well I just don't remember like the
00:33:35
actual dancing itself I remember the dresses getting measured and like boys being shoved towards me and just having
00:33:43
a good time like all the other stuff yeah yeah I yeah I have such fun memories of those stock Ops were
00:33:52
definitely my personal favorite um just cuz I loved like the Greaser 50 Style oh my gosh yeah I have a I have a
00:34:00
picture that I found of me in a sock hop dress with like a kenalin twirling and it was at Point c a
00:34:07
pavilion and I'm like oh that's such a good memory like I love it I love it you
00:34:11
have to send it to me so I can I can see it um but uh it's cool that you're doing
00:34:16
that now too as like or you've picked it back up um and uh are doing classes or
00:34:23
just is it just like a group that does it now like oh yeah it's like my whole
00:34:27
life life now to be honest like I work to make money so that I can dance all the time um I started last
00:34:35
April and um I am now on some different teams so I do I do Collegiate shag as well which is like under the umbrella of
00:34:46
East Coast I do some Balboa I'm not good at it though and um Lindy Hop primarily
00:34:52
but I'm on two different teams I have an official dance partner now we've
00:34:57
competed and we won um medal which is really cool and I have some events that I'm flying to soon and I'm hoping to
00:35:07
compete in those like I really want to be competitive um it's something that I
00:35:11
I love a lot and um yeah I do it every day honestly uh it's so fun it's so fun
00:35:22
yeah it is yeah no I've been wanting to maybe like pick it back up again because
00:35:26
you should such fun memories of it and it's cool to hear that you're like
00:35:30
competing cuz I know that was a thing for me for a while where I wanted to get to that level um and I did smaller
00:35:36
competition stuff but to get to a level to compete would be so fun I mean Taylor
00:35:41
bosar and I would watch videos of competitions to like learn new steps and uh all kinds of stuff like that so
00:35:49
anyway but oh man I love that you're doing that that's like fantastic so yeah
00:35:54
so I know we've kind of jumped around quite a bit we did like we did like a brief and then we went to college and
00:36:00
then we went back to grade school and early high school but now I want to kind of jump past college
00:36:06
and uh graduation and entering into the job sphere and like what you're doing
00:36:12
today um and uh and what's like on the horizon so you know uh I graduated in December 22 I want to say I
00:36:23
don't know why I can't remember exactly but um I so I graduated with my bachelor's in entomology and my minor in
00:36:31
art history and um I tagged the minor on last minute and I feel like that was like the best decision I made in my
00:36:39
whole college career in addition to like switching my major to entomology from Global disease biology um I had so much
00:36:47
fun taking those art history classes and it really fulfilled like the creative side of me that was lacking because I
00:36:54
you know was taking all the science and math courses um so I lived in Davis for a little bit and
00:37:02
I started working for pler County which is like a county above Sacramento um and I worked for their
00:37:10
Mosquito Abatement District uh also as a laboratory technician and um then I saw a job
00:37:19
opportunity for Sacramento Yello and I'm like you know that's way closer cuz at
00:37:24
the time I was commuting commuting like 40 50 minutes and I was like this is not
00:37:29
sustainable like yeah also working at like 7 6: a.m. um and being a dancer and then commuting like that was just really
00:37:40
difficult so uh and it was also a salary increase so that was like oh okay I'm
00:37:45
definitely going to try to get this job so I've been working for um Sacramento
00:37:50
Yolo County for since December and that's been going really well and right now looking to get a state
00:37:59
job um I think that's just the natural progression of where my career is taking
00:38:05
me I I love the reliability of having the county benefits they're the same as
00:38:12
the state benefits um you know I have a pension I have really good insurance I have reliable like wage increases and um
00:38:22
you know it might not be as much pay as like a private place but I just love the
00:38:26
stability of having a County Job um so I'm hoping to kind of break into like
00:38:35
the agricultural side of pest control or something like that with the state that's super cool yeah no those uh yeah
00:38:42
those County jobs are sweet I worked for the county and high school I worked for
00:38:46
a library cool yeah and so they yeah I had like same deal I even at whatever that was 16 17 it was like pension and
00:38:55
uh I didn't work enough to get full benefits but I had some of them and I still get mail about it but that's
00:39:01
awesome that's awesome to hear and like uh it is it's cool to catch up with
00:39:05
people and here because I feel like so many people have such interesting jobs now and things that I would have I mean
00:39:11
I didn't know you super well but just also things that I would have never thought of even being a job uh you know
00:39:19
what I mean like I don't think of uh Mosquito Abatement as a as a job title that somebody would have right so yeah
00:39:27
so that's like so interesting um and I was asking you before we came on which
00:39:33
uh you told me was probably not the case but I was asking if down the line if we
00:39:37
would be able to pull Jurassic Park and use uh mosquitoes to like clone different animals and things in the
00:39:43
future but it sounds like that's a negative on that I mean I am not into genetics like that's above me for sure
00:39:51
but I I do I mean I told you about how I worked for a vector genetics lab in college and so their primary goal at the
00:39:59
time was to fight malaria using um genetically modified mosquitoes and some of the mosquitos that I took care of in
00:40:06
the lab had a jellyfish jellyfish Jean spiced into them and that made them flues and so I mean weird things can
00:40:15
happen with genetics these days so who am I to say what the going to look like yeah we'll see uh yeah we're going to
00:40:25
have like Mega mosquitoes um that you know not too far from now that are just like the size of your face or something
00:40:31
um yeah I mean California you know one of the things with my jobs job is that we deal with invasive mosquitoes so
00:40:38
right now we have uh invasive 80s egypti and80s alop pictus invading California and uh they're not large
00:40:47
mosquitoes but they're very bright and boldly colored and the reason why we're
00:40:52
worried about them is because they transmit things like Den um so I mean mosquitoes are just a fun a fun thing
00:41:00
that's so I would never know that aside from you just telling me that I would
00:41:04
never even my gosh that up of like you know you want to hear my like one of my craziest mosquito stories yes okay so in
00:41:15
college I told you I worked for that Vector genetics lab and it was during the pandemic and my main job was taking
00:41:22
care of mosquito colonies so you have these insectaries which are these temperature humidity controlled
00:41:28
rooms and you go in there and there's cages of just thousands of mosquitoes in
00:41:34
each cage and you know my job is to feed them and to make sure they're doing well
00:41:40
and mating and like all the life cycle is being complete and stuff like that but one year the lab couldn't go to
00:41:49
Africa to get a off free born eye um in order to bring them back to Davis and do
00:41:55
genetic testing on them um and so we're like you know I wasn't going to go to Africa I'm too low on the
00:42:02
food chain for that but my supervisor was like okay since we can't go and get
00:42:06
these anop from Africa what is the similar mosquitoes that we have uh in the Davis area and so they're like the
00:42:15
rice field mosquitoes anaes uh Freeborn ey are similar to anes Gambier which are in Africa and so we're
00:42:23
like okay we're going to try to go collect wild anaes in the rice field bring them back and try to get them jump
00:42:30
started into uh our colonies like try to make them Colony mosquitoes and that sounds fine to dandy like what you just
00:42:37
go out and trap mosquitoes you bring them back you put them in the lab but getting them to breed in the lab is
00:42:44
super difficult like the in Colony mosquitoes have been breeding in lab for Generations upon Generations upon
00:42:51
Generations like you literally just give them blood after they've made it and
00:42:55
they'll lay eggs like that but um yeah these wild mosquitoes would just not lay eggs for us which was a huge
00:43:02
problem and so they're like okay um we're going to need you to forcibly meet
00:43:08
them like we're we're down to our last option you need to we need to do something and so oh my gosh like when I
00:43:18
tell the story I'm like wow that's wild um forcibly mating is exactly what it
00:43:24
sounds like you have to forcibly mate mosquitoes and so basically you get a tiny little
00:43:31
vacuum like the size of a pencil tip and you stick the female mosquito on there and then you take a male mosquito
00:43:43
and you kind of like introduce them together like you're like okay it's sexy
00:43:47
time like you have to get the mail started because the males have claspers on the end of their abdomen so they have
00:43:54
to start trying to clasp so you need to like get you know the antenna like the pheromones in the room I don't
00:44:02
know and then after you do that after your sexy introduction you um have to and also
00:44:12
this is you have to knock out the mail at some point I can't remember you have
00:44:15
to like put CO2 or like put them in the fridge for a little bit but anyways after you knock them out you have to cut
00:44:21
off their legs cut off their wings and cut off their head and then mate them and if you're really good at your job
00:44:30
you can make multiple females to one male um I don't think I was ever that good
00:44:39
but yeah that's just yeah that's the story I like to tell you like entomology
00:44:44
is really weird like sometimes you just have to do crazy things and and the worst part about it was is like it
00:44:51
didn't even work like they did really lay eggs like they were mated yeah they we definitely made it
00:45:01
them like I was a mosquito Matchmaker I made it them but they didn't lay eggs
00:45:05
still and that's because they were picky about where they wanted to lay eggs so oh my gosh well I think you gave
00:45:12
me I think you just gave me the title of the episode which is like uh mosquito sex ed um or something along those lines
00:45:20
um because wow um that's a job that's crazy oh my gosh um yeah I just learned a heck of a lot
00:45:30
about mosquitoes just now um so I hope you put on like the slow jams in the background you l a couple candles you
00:45:37
made it happen it sounds it sounds like it was a lot of fun to be honest you know I thought about it it it was fun
00:45:43
but it was also really morbid when I started thinking about what I was doing you know like I kind of had to like
00:45:48
dissociate a little bit like compartmentalize um I do think one of the cooler parts though about the
00:45:54
reproductive cycle is I was able to take out the spera out of the females and see
00:45:59
the sperm flowing inside of them um so that was really cool like it was just under a normal microscope I saw the
00:46:07
sperm flowing inside of um yeah wow it bugs are fascinating yeah that's why I
00:46:16
studed them they're so cool yeah and I don't even mean that like sarcastically or anything like this
00:46:21
is legitimately I feel like I could listen you talk about this all day um like it's legitimately fascinating to me
00:46:27
um because yeah I was I was not a science person and I hated like biology and all that kind of stuff so just like
00:46:35
but but that was when I was a kid now I'm I'm coming around to it so I hearing
00:46:40
it again oh okay that's uh that's interesting and a necessary uh process
00:46:48
right now to kind of like figure out to learn right we got we that's again the
00:46:54
whole point of science right is to further our education fur this planet and it um it's such that's such an
00:47:03
interesting J oh mysh and uh keep up the good work because that that's I don't
00:47:10
know what else to say so far I think you have the coolest job of anyone show I I
00:47:15
mean that was in college I do more mundane things now to be quite honest but you know I keep those memories with
00:47:24
me oh man that's yeah I can't get over it okay I gotta I gota I I just have
00:47:30
visuals now in my head oh yeah I have wild stories but I I'll keep I'll keep
00:47:35
it to a minimum um so we you kind of touched on this earlier was I I always ask people
00:47:43
whether they're going to have kids down the line or you know if they have a homeschool family kind of approach them
00:47:47
of like and ask them like would you homeschool your kids would you recommend people homeschool their kids um and you
00:47:54
kind of said tutoring is a must uh when you have a child who uh is maybe more mathematically or scientifically
00:48:01
inclined but uh but in general I didn't know if you had any other thoughts that
00:48:06
you wanted to expand on that with of if you've given that any thought at all um
00:48:10
of whether you would homeschool your kids or you recommend it for people you know I like go back and forth I I have
00:48:18
emphatically said for the last couple years like no I definitely would not and um but you know my brothers had
00:48:27
a kid and I've heard him talk about it and I don't really have like a finger on
00:48:34
where public schools are right now except for that I've just heard really bad things I I think ultimately though I
00:48:41
don't trust myself to give like a really comprehensive education like I am not an
00:48:47
expert in math and science and history and um all of these fields I think maybe up to middle school I could definitely
00:48:54
ma manage uh or even maybe into middle school but after that you know I would probably consider private
00:49:01
school um and but that's so expensive and I think it also kind of depends on you
00:49:10
know whatever my partner wants um I think the last couple people that I've dated have been like oh my gosh I
00:49:19
would love to homeschool kids like they've been so excited about it and you know I have all these traumas right I'm
00:49:26
like no but they'll end up like this and they'll end up like this but then I have
00:49:31
to remember like hey public school kids like have their own set of things that they had to deal with and like I have no
00:49:37
idea what that experience is like so I really go back and forth I dep I think it depends on like where you live to so
00:49:43
many variables yeah no I I 100% agree with you I think the ultimate thing and is always just like you got to figure
00:49:50
out what works best for your kid you know and I think there's experimentation
00:49:54
that goes into that of like maybe you do a year home school maybe you do a couple
00:49:57
years then you go to public school for a couple years and you you figure out what
00:50:00
works for your kid and everybody's different you know and there's so many
00:50:04
options now of just I mean there was options when we were kids but there's so
00:50:08
many options even more now of like what you can do uh when it comes to educating
00:50:14
your child and I like that I like what you said about kind of being self-aware of like I
00:50:20
know where my strengths lie and I know where my weaknesses lie and so when it comes to the weakness area I need help
00:50:25
let me seek out that um that's that's huge you know um and having done it I think you know what you
00:50:34
would probably do different from your parents um and the areas that you would help your kid that maybe your parents
00:50:40
just didn't know you know uh that's what my parents always they're like we didn't
00:50:44
know what we didn't know you know yeah exactly and they just tried their best
00:50:49
exactly they had to do you know they tried their best and you know and hey we turned out okay we we college graduates
00:50:55
we have careers we have jobs we we pay our own bills um you know we made it and that's that's
00:51:02
true for the majority of our friends is like we we all made it and we're all
00:51:07
okay and uh yeah I tell I tell myself all the time I'm like it's all going to
00:51:12
be okay like you know and uh I think you make a really good point about each child is different because I look at my
00:51:19
siblings and we've talked about this before like we all had such a different
00:51:23
experience and I even like to say that we all had different parents like none of us experience the the parent the same
00:51:31
way as another person experienced the parent um and so I think one of the other things that is really important is
00:51:39
asking the child what they want I don't remember being asked you know hey have
00:51:43
you ever wanted to go to public school like have you thought about this have you thought about this and I think one
00:51:50
of the reasons might might have been because I was so introverted and so into my books and my hobbies that they just
00:51:55
were like oh she loves this she'll she'll be you know fine with this but
00:52:00
because I didn't know what public school was like I I never had the option to
00:52:06
make an informed Choice um and honestly public school was kind of demonized a little bit like it
00:52:15
was like oh all those public schoolers and um so I think just more education on like the different School types and
00:52:23
allowing your kid to have a voice in what they think is best for themselves that's an interesting thing you brought
00:52:30
up I hadn't even thought about the demonization of public school kids cuz like I remember joking about that with
00:52:38
people but also I think a lot of homeschoolers didn't know that I had gone to public school and so I never
00:52:43
truly thought that about public school kids I just you know would I just played into it because everybody else was doing
00:52:49
it you know you know you don't want to be the odd man out kind of a thing um
00:52:53
but that's an interesting idea there I hadn't I hadn't heard that verbalized
00:52:58
like that in a while so of like public school kids were kind of looked at as like well you're kind of lesser than
00:53:05
yeah and I mean and and I'm all of the non-Christian ideas right like like you're GNA be swayed or you're going to
00:53:14
there's all these things that exist and to be fair like I believe my parents
00:53:19
kept me out of public school for a good reason like you know I might not be aware of it now but maybe the area that
00:53:25
we lived in just didn't have good public schools and that just was not a feasible
00:53:30
option but um yeah definitely was demonized in more ways than one yeah yeah no I yeah I for sure see that I
00:53:41
actually recently asked my mom why they they homeschooled me and she she told me
00:53:46
that since I was a baby my grandmother had been bugging her and been like hey I think you should homeschool you know
00:53:53
they just I don't know she had just kind of always been putting that in my mom's
00:53:56
ear and it wasn't until I was in second grade my sister was going into kindergarten and uh or preschool or
00:54:03
whatever and my my mom was like okay let's just give it a shot and it had to
00:54:06
do partly with the schools in the area we just moved the schools in the area were not she didn't love them and so I
00:54:12
think she just kind of thought maybe let's just give it a shot we'll see how
00:54:15
it goes if it's absolutely terrible we can always go back you know um but it
00:54:20
was a struggle for her because she like she was like I'm giving up my freedom
00:54:25
cuz both of my kids are about to go I'm giving my freed toate them which I mean
00:54:31
being a mom is a whole job in itself being a mom a teacher is oh my gosh I can't even imagine so uh I am having
00:54:37
some parents on at some point so I'm going to get some different perspectives
00:54:42
uh on that one as well and I am excited your brother's coming on oh my gosh she
00:54:46
told me about it yeah I'm ex we had a whole conversation very cool well uh Elizabeth
00:54:54
is there anything you want to leave the people with uh anything we didn't cover
00:54:59
any last memories that have been unlocked while we've been chatting um this has been it's been awesome to catch
00:55:05
up with you yeah no I thank you for having me I I've Loved this podcast series as you know and I've always
00:55:13
wanted to be on a podcast I love podcast so much and um it's been such a Solace
00:55:18
for me to hear other homeschoolers experience like homeschooling is a really unique thing in itself but
00:55:27
hearing from homeschoolers that like lived in the same area in the same group I'm like oh my gosh like thank you like
00:55:34
you went through this too uh we're not alone um I think last words shout out to
00:55:40
my mom you're right they did sacrifice so much for us uh she has been my number
00:55:46
one supporter uh all the way up through college and even now and she worked a job to get me get through college and
00:55:57
she's just always been very crazy about whatever I'm crazy about and so yeah I
00:56:03
love you Mom yes that's right we love you Mrs slag boo awesome well thank you once again
00:56:12
for coming on it's been amazing catching up with you and uh for all the rest of
00:56:16
you listeners uh you know do the things that you normally do subscribe follow like all those types of things I also
00:56:22
want to hear from you I have an email account it's exh S A [email protected] it'll all be in the show show notes um
00:56:31
and linked up there but if if you got things questions if you've got people you want to hear on the show whatever
00:56:37
you know um concerns compliments all of the you know all of the things uh let me
00:56:44
know I would love to hear from you so uh yeah this has been the XOM schoolers Club until next week we'll see you
00:56:51
[Music] [Music]