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well welcome back my ex homeschooler friends it is your friend Jacob Gooden and I've got a special episode today uh
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my friend Liz is joining me on the podcast today and Liz and I we kind of have a funny story how we met um this
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show I genuinely thought this show was really only going to get seen by a lot of people that I knew uh but you know
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the internet works in mysterious ways and uh Liz commented on one of my YouTube videos and I said hey you should
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shoot me an email and we can chat and so about a month ago I think we jumped on a
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zoom call and we just chatted for like almost two hours and just had a great time learning about each other and um
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and learning about each other's homeschool experiences Liz is a homeschool kid of the 80s and the 90s uh
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while I'm a homeschool kid of the 2000s and the 2010s and so it was cool to kind
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of compare notes and see similarities and differences and we're going to kind
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of talk about that today so first and foremost Liz welcome to the x schoolers Club thanks I still can't believe I'm
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actually doing this to be honest yeah I kind of Twisted her arm a little bit I uh to come on um but I'm so excited you
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have such a cool story and um I think our audience will be interested to hear so with that I mean share a little bit
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about your homeschool experience growing up like siblings how long were you homeschooled that kind of thing like
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let's set the stage a little bit okay well well first of all I'm a a marine
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brat my dad was in the um Marine Corps and so I grew up on andof military bases on the east
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coast and uh we're very we were very very Catholic um Ultra right-wing traditionalist conservative
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Catholic and my homeschool Journey began it was late 80s and it was for pre and kindergarten and then we took a break
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and I was in Catholic School regular Catholic school for first through third grade and then from third third or
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fourth grade so early 90s all the way up until uh through high school until I went to college so I graduated I School
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in 2001 so it was most of almost all of the 90s where I was schooled okay and I have
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one sibling one older sister and curiously enough she was never homeschooled that's uh okay that's it's
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something that I never questioned to be honest until recently where well actually to be honest when I started
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watching videos on on your channel um and talk and and hearing other people talk about their homeschool experiences
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and their families and then we had the conversation and I think you asked me uh why wasn't my sister homeschooled and I
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paused and I thought you know I never actually really thought about it I just accepted that she went to regular school
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and that I was homeschooled uh I asked her once straight out how come I was homeschooled and you
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weren't and she said that our parents gave her the choice now okay she's 5
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years older than me so a pretty big pretty big age G and uh H she we we just have very different
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personalities and I think my parents recognize that to be honest um I haven't had a conversation
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with my my dad about these types of things questioning why they um they let her go to school but kept me at
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home um but oh she did home school for one year okay I'm remembering now she got a
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of it I think I think that was it honestly I think she she tried one year hated it so badly and just it just
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didn't work at all on on many levels and so she wanted to go back to regular
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school my parents said okay fine um yeah so that that's that's the basics that's the basics okay yeah so
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one of the things we chatted about because and you would ask me about this when we chatted last was like cuz my
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homeschool experience was very I was involved with a lot of other homeschool kids and so I still had kind
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of this semblance of like somewhat of a classro at certain times and like things
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like that and I I'm trying to remember if you did or or didn't I remember you said you
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were a part of a Homeschool Group but I can't I I'm trying to remember the
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specifics on that yeah uh we were part of a Homeschool Group but it wasn't until I was in high school okay uh so
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from third grade to high school we were on our own and at one point when we lived on um when we lived on base there
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was a family just a couple of doors down from us that did homeschool as well but we did not coordinate at all I
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mean never I the only thing that we coordinated was our play times we would all be able to play together during the
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day and do home you know at home school times when everyone else was school right um but it was very isolating until
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I was in high school and um the thing was the particular church that we were at um that had the Homeschool Group The
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Homeschool Community uh oddly enough just just a fluke a chance there was nobody my age
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the closest person to me was four years younger so that means I was the only high schooler homeschooling in in the
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group you know and in the group they did organize a couple of group classes like
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what you me mentioned you know like um once or twice a week everyone in the same grade would get together and the
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parents would rotate you know teaching different things but I was I never could do that
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just because uh I was not the same grade I I was doing completely different things you know uh and because of that I
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was just thinking this morning actually when I was thinking about the call we would have today and talking I was
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reflecting on some things I hadn't really thought about before and I realized because I didn't have anyone my
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age to I didn't have any peers essentially homeschooling with me you know and so I hung out with the
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moms like all the time I had not really thought about that before until recently um and so I was in this very
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strange in betweene place where I was friends with the moms like they would talk to me as if I were an older woman
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like a young woman or another one of the moms they wouldn't um talk about different things when I was around but
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yet sometimes I would hang out with the with the kiddos or you know it it's just
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a very in strange in between Place yeah it's a it's a weird place to be because
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like you're like if you hang out with the kids like I don't know I I I've hung
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out with smaller with groups of younger kids than me and I tend to you tend to when you're the oldest one you tend to
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be like the leader of the group right you're kind the babysit you're the
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default babysitter yeah yeah exactly yeah um and then yeah and then hanging out with the moms just like that's a
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total you know totally different conversation that to some degree you can maybe relate to certain things but other
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things it's like you're not a mom yet you know like yeah you know so that is a
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weird place to be um I can't really imagine it um because I mean I grew up with peers um but did you have like did
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you have friends outside of the homeschool world of like kids in the neighborhood I'm sure also being an army
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brat that's like you're moving around place to place to some degree so that's
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also got to play some roles as well yeah generally speaking we moved I'd say
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every three years about every three years okay uh but by the time I was we were really hardcore homeschooling and
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then by the time I was in high school my dad had retired from the from the Marines he was still working um but
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there was no one in the neighborhood honestly um well that's not true and now
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I'm remembering Jennifer sorry Jennifer wherever you are in this world I'm not
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still in contact with you but she was and she went to public school she lived like in a different part of the
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neighborhood and I used to go and hang out with her um and I was part of the COO at our
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church so that's like the um that's like the Catholic um youth group for teens
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you know I'm trying to remember what sto stands for I think it's Catholic Youth
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Organization at the time um it was difficult for me I did not have any close friends um I was I was
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the weirdo to be to be honest uh I was the only homeschooler homeschooling high schooler in our youth
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group and there was a few people that I was friends with casually but um I mean this was before the age where everyone
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had cell phones so there was no like text and and stuff like that but I never visited anyone's house no one ever
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invited me over I saw people at church functions and youth group activities uh and that was it I think
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it's interesting too because I feel like by the time I was homeschool I mean I I
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was in high school it was 2010 2014 and so I mean yeah we had cell phones we had
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the internet we had a lot of ways to connect but also homeschooling was like it was just accepted in my hometown like
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there were so many of us yeah we talked about that before yeah yeah yeah and so I can't imagine I've been in very few
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circumstances where I'm the only homeschool kid there um and I don't know
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where that shift happened this is something I I definitely want to learn more about at some point but I know
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somewhere in that like late '90s to like the 2000s I feel like there was a shift
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where was like homeschooling became much more accepted um and I know a couple moms who
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homeschooled in the 90s um and they and maybe even some in the 80s and they kind
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of shared little glimpses of this like oh like we were afraid like the government's gonna come take our kid
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away and things like that that was a thing for sure yeah yeah yeah and so it was like you know we stay inside all day
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long and then we don't go out until it's like regular times where like when I was
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in high school it's like I I could go shopping at 10:30 in the morning yeah especially when I had my license it's
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like I go shopping at 10:30 in the morning get groceries whatever uh people still looked at me weird but then you
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say oh I'm a homeschool kid and they go okay whatever and they just brush off
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like I'm not there was no fear for me of like I didn't feel fear at least of like
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getting reported to the police or something like that for like oh he's skipping school it's like I'm kind of
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not because I already did it you know I did it last night or something like that
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but yeah um so I think there's there's that component as well but oh my God you
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said that and I just had a flashback to homeschooling and being like Oh it's 11:
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in the morning but I did I finished today so the rest of the day is just whatever you want to be I mean you do
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whatever because you have what you need to do each day and if you finish it earlier you finish it quickly okay boom
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you know just I just had a flashback to that I hadn't thought about it in years
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that's wild but kind of one of like it's like a great feeling and a terrible
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feeling all at the same time yeah yeah it's it's um it's it's a mixed bag for
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me when when I reflect on that and what what it possibly taught me about um life or or just work in general uh
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but going back to the difference and and in the possible shift where homeschooling became more well-known
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more accepted more normalized I can definitely remember um the the last year I was in high school so it was
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2000 um where I wasn't part of it but there was like Whispers rumors oh did you hear
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that the school on the next County over is accepting homeschoolers to to take science classes or you could join the
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sports team of that the public school even though you're homeschooler as long
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as you get a voucher from like the the county or the the state blah blah blah and I remember being am maaz we're all
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like oh wow wow okay you know this feeling of um changed changed and I remember and some
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people in the group some parents did not like that no they didn't like it at all
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because there there was this a lot of people wanted the separation and the separation was one of the reasons why
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they started homeschooling in the first place that there's definitely um not
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everyone was on board with the normalization of homeschooling or um mixing home schooling kids with regular
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school kids and make you know all of that they didn't like that um but uh I recently I recently had a chat with my
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mom about this exact thing because my my family was involved in two primary homeschool groups so there was group
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Solutions which was kind of a like uh uh every other week meeting class meeting and like teaching classes it was very
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like kind of more of a standard School type of thing so you had three periods you had a lunch
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break was really structured yeah it was a lot more structured a lot of times it was more uh they tended to be fun
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classes I mean there were still like you could go take a science class but there
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was also a lot of just like um home X stuff or like here's like we did a games
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class where it was like we learned how to play a bunch of card games and so it tended to be a little bit more it was
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more about the socialization aspect I feel like than it was about the actual education even though
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there was good education it just was um I don't know I think the focus was more
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on getting just actually giving kids more of a structured like here be in a room together and learn how to interact
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with each other um so there was that and then we also were part of this thing called acheve which was the association
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of Christian Home Educators of ventur County and um achieve was much more of a it was kind of a support group for
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homeschooling parents um but then we ALS achieve also offered things like graduation so all of the kids who are in
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in the same grade we all got a graduation capping down the full thing we would rent a venue they did school
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dances field trips uh curriculum sales like all kinds of um stuff and then a lot of support for The Homeschool
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parents where they could go and just ask questions and help educate each other um
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and so anyway I bring this up to say achieve had a very strong stance on what homeschooling was and for them it was
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you are a are a private school and you build the curriculum or not necessarily build all the but you choose the
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curriculum for your your students a very traditional homeschool experience for your kids group Solutions near the end
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of when I was involved in it they were opening their stuff up to families that were doing independent studies um and in
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that in our area it just looked like um it was still the state school uh curriculum but it was just you
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do it at home right and and so it was interesting because there was a lot of push back on that like you were saying
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like it was kind of this cross breeding of like like oh okay we're letting like
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the normies into this thing that like is traditionally just been like very traditional homeschool experience um so
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anyway I I remember push back like that happening vaguely um hearing more about it now um from my mom who served kind of
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like in both capacities as like a parent and adviser in both of those things um and she's like oh yeah no you would have
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people who were just like I'm gonna leave if you allow this to happen and it's like yeah you know that kind of
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thing so anyway that's a little bit of a tangent yeah on my side but um but that
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is interesting that it's right around that like 2201 era where it seems to be shifting
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into like kind of an acceptance and also schools I mean schools in my area recognized that homeschool kids could
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come you could get vouchers to place boards and yeah do certain things and and you know that as well so yeah I mean
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even uh let's see I graduated I started college in 2001 and 1999 2000 when I was
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applying to different colleges and universities uh it was still a question to us like in general to my
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family to me in particular how um a normal university would uh how they would feel about
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homeschooler if they would even accept yeah um you know I took it I took the SAT so I had all that but as to a real
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high school diploma I don't have one so I mean I couldn't I couldn't even
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today if someone would Pro say well prove to me that you graduated from high school you have a high school education
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sorry can't do it I mean I have my college degrees after that so that be good enough but at the time it was
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definitely sort of up in the air okay well we're applying to these places will they accept the fact that
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I'm I can do this and that I have a high school education we don't know and now I
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mean you could tell me if I'm wrong I have the impression that colleges in us
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don't they don't care anymore yeah it's more about if you have the correct
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paperwork so something I something I learned recently So Cal I grew up in California and California I guess has
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some of the loosest homeschool regulations but they do offer um like curriculum guidelines um and
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things like that um but some states have much stricter like you're actually doing
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uh standardized testing so even though you home educate your child you have to take them in for testing for all of
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these things they keep transcrip you have you have all this paperwork you have to submit those types of things um
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and so when it does come time for college your kid should be well prepared because all of that information is
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actually there okay okay um and there's private assessments as well where they
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bring in not only the parents as teachers but also like trained professional teachers to come in and
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assess where a child is at and place thees things like that so okay you can do that in California it's a little bit
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looser um I don't know all of the specifics so people do your own research but um but yeah that's something I was
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learning about my mom kept transcripts for me um and had taken some classes to to know this is how we need to structure
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it and here's what he needs to get into college and so okay she kind of but she
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had started with that end goal in mind of like if I homeschool my kids I want them when they graduate to be able to do
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what they want so okay she got the help she needed to get me there yeah yeah she
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had yeah she had that structure and that goal the the framework in place to yeah
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to follow through with that for yall yeah but as far as like when I went and interviewed at the college or got on
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phone calls with them or anything like that that never really came up as an issue it was never anything they just
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were like oh you have your transcripts great like okay you did good in these subjects you did poor in these subject
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you know it was just very I don't know it felt normal yeah yeah yeah yeah no I
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think it is I think it is now honestly um uh at the time for me I ended up going to a religious
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University and part of the reason for that was they didn't ask questions they
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didn't okay they didn't push too much to to ask for transcripts or to be like
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okay so what did you actually do or what were your grades um and I that that was one of the
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factors into why I went to that specific University let's talk a little bit about
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that transition then like into University it's kind of like your first time out on your own out in the
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Free World even though you're still kind of in like I also went to a religious
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University so I was still kind of in that bubble of religion but yeah yeah definitely was eye opening oh God yeah
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uh wow yeah the the bubble was there like I said it was very um uh I I don't want to say conservative
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yeah it was more in the conservative but just religious it was just very religious it was small small University
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uh really they really heavily emphasized um like uh students being in groups like
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households and sort of like I guess religious versions of sororities and fraternities that's how
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you would explain it yeah uh but still still going into that atmosphere and my sister actually lived
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nearby so I saw my older sister you know almost weekly I would see her around you
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know uh it was it was hell I uh I was physically ill for good I'd say good six
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months I lost like 20 pounds because I couldn't eat my my system just like stopped working I was so homesick I
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remember I couldn't even sleep in my room in my I shared um a dorm room I lived in the
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dorm and I'd have I take my pillow my blanket at night and I go down to the chapel because every dorm had a chapel
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that's how religious this this college was and I'd have to go in the back of
00:22:11
the chapel with my blanket and my pillow and that's the only way I would be able
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to sleep I would go and sleep in the in the little church um and I'd call my my parents and
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I'd say I can't do this I want to come home and it was my dad who said no
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you're staying there at least for the first semester uh you will come home for
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Thanksgiving I was about it was about a six- hour drive from from home uh yeah so not impossible to get to
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but you know it wasn't like I was in the same town right and so you know and I have my
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sister and all of her um oh I guess this is the part where I mentioned my sister
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was actually none at the time so she was in a monastery that was nearby the university so I was friends with all the
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nuns like all the nuns knew me you know and oh Liz is going through a hard time so they would all be visiting me
00:23:04
all the time and it's it's like I had 15 or 20 older sisters you know um watching
00:23:09
out for me um and it was just I don't remember what finally clicked because it
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did it did finally click you know I'd say in between Thanksgiving and Christmas I was able to start eating
00:23:24
again um being able to sleep normally um and then I was okay and you know I continued with my my college life but
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honestly I'm trying to trying to pinpoint exactly why it was so difficult for me to make the transition the the
00:23:42
classes weren't that hard academically it was fine uh you know it wasn't it I
00:23:48
was able to to do everything it wasn't that wasn't the problem uh I think the
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the the two big ones were just being away from my mom and dad I mean I had spent up until then I was
00:24:01
18 years old and up until then I had rarely even spent more than two or three nights away from home I mean you know um
00:24:12
it was just so intense to be without them uh and I think it was also being with so many people my my own age and
00:24:23
people were not mean they weren't mean I can't I can't recall at college I cannot
00:24:28
recall one person being mean or weird about me being homeschooled people I I I had it was it was rough in high school
00:24:36
at the youth group I had people um definitely it wasn't bully territory but it was Oz the weirdo and you know
00:24:47
right they would say things straight out like oh she's cooky because you know
00:24:51
she's homeschooled or um I wouldn't know things and they would laugh at it or
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think it was funny or you know you know regular Teenage banig Gans being little fitthe heads you know but
00:25:03
at college no one was mean no one was mean like that but it was just I was different I you just I couldn't get
00:25:12
around that the big things were we were all Americans we were all Catholics we were all you know same age um but I just
00:25:23
didn't understand what they were talking about you know music movies stuff like that it was like going
00:25:32
to a different planet and realizing these people are speaking words that I know but I don't understand
00:25:39
anything okay yeah it was it it was and there were some other homeschoolers too we would recognize each other you know
00:25:46
like you're walking the class and you see someone and I'd be like oh long jean
00:25:52
skirt she doesn't wear makeup and she's wearing like a uh a t-shirt from Cake
00:25:59
the band I'm like she's homeschooled like it was just like like weird combinations of
00:26:06
individuality it would be like oh H School alert or um someone in class who is constantly asking questions I'd be
00:26:15
like oh and at some point youd look at each other and then after a few days or after a few weeks you'd like sort of be
00:26:21
like so where did you go to school and the Pres be like oh I was homeschooled I like oh me too and it was like this yeah
00:26:30
this relief where you know we were joking in our in our first talk about like having gang signs or something like
00:26:35
there should be some secret homeschool sign that you could flash someone and be like yeah I understand but still it was
00:26:42
just I don't think I've been through I've lived through some really intense
00:26:46
experiences in my life I'm in my 40s now but honestly there there's very few
00:26:53
that can top that that first semester where I went to a regular College it was just yeah I feel you I mean I didn't
00:27:05
have quite as big of a problem I feel like uh with the sleeping and the eating I mean I had some eating stuff I also
00:27:13
you know everyone says you gained the Freshman 15 or whatever I lost 15 to 20 pounds also um and I think it was mostly
00:27:21
because I went from I was cooking myself meals every day like lunch and then my mom was making dinner or I was making
00:27:26
dinner or whatever I wait for cooking like good healthy meals every single day to eating cafeteria food that's true the
00:27:33
cafeteria food is just even the best cafeteria it's going to be gross compared to it was yeah it was not it so
00:27:39
I think I just my body was just rejecting that um but I but I relate when you say like oh I call I also
00:27:45
called my parents and I was like I can't do this you know and and my dad same as
00:27:49
you was like well you're finishing out the year or you're finishing out the
00:27:52
semester or whatever and um yeah and I I had moved grew up in California I moved
00:27:59
to Illinois for college and so that's a big I mean that's a plane ride away oh
00:28:04
yeah that's yeah yeah yeah and so I was also like you I was just I was trapped
00:28:09
there so I was just like okay I'm stuck here my folks were like Thanksgiving
00:28:14
rolled around they're like have fun at a friend's house and I was like okay so
00:28:18
like you know I had made Thanksgiving yeah okay but Christmas rolled around and I was like okay I'm going home
00:28:25
finally uh we had extended uh um holiday because our our school did a a January term that was like a short it was a
00:28:33
three-week condensed class so if you didn't take that you could just stay home for I think it was like six weeks
00:28:39
almost and so I did that and the whole time I was there I just wanted to be back at school and my dad was like see
00:28:47
like you thought you hated it but like now that you're back here you you want
00:28:51
to go back and you want to finish it and so so it just became it became abundantly clear that I was like okay I
00:28:57
need to do this so even though after that I still kind of looked at like okay maybe I could transfer to a school
00:29:02
closer to home or whatever yeah I thought of that too transferring closer it yeah once I got into it I
00:29:09
think I just hit a point where I went I'm already here I'm already this far
00:29:14
done like why not just finish it out kind of a deal you know like I've proved
00:29:18
to myself I can do it why not just go all the way yeah uh so but I like you also uh I also had to ID identify the
00:29:28
homeschool kids and what's funny I just found out that a buddy of mine we were
00:29:32
in a band together freshman first semester freshman year he was also homeschooled had no clue I just
00:29:38
genuinely thought he was just a cool guy he was just I thought he just was good he was good at masking it apparently um
00:29:45
but oh I can talk about that that's something I learned that's something I
00:29:49
learned today yeah so but to your point I also I remember having to learn like pop culture references and like listen
00:29:56
to bands and like all kinds of stuff like that and it was just like it was a crash course in pop culture really yeah
00:30:05
and for me this was like I said this was 2001 uh 2002 I I can't even remember if
00:30:14
Wikipedia existed at this point I mean I remember knowing like Googling and doing
00:30:19
research on the internet and things like that existing but in terms of nowadays where
00:30:26
we're like oh I don't know something okay two seconds later oh okay now I do know
00:30:30
it that did not exist and so what I did I I I remember at some point realizing okay uh I don't want to be the weirdo
00:30:42
anymore and I want to know these things that everyone else knows and I made the conscious decision
00:30:49
that I'm going to learn these things and until I do know what everyone's talking
00:30:54
about I'm just not going to say anything and so when someone brings up a song or a reference whatever if you just
00:31:03
either keep your mouth shut or laugh like everyone else is laughing even though you don't know what everyone is
00:31:10
laughing about people just assume you know you know you stop being you sto being weird and when I was in high
00:31:17
school and when I first arrived at College um I was I guess it was my personality
00:31:23
but uh I was I was the the odd one out like I I I was a teenager who didn't care
00:31:33
about fitting in mhm uh which is a bit odd it's odd and I even got that reputation um a lot of the the parents
00:31:43
in our home school group would talk about it openly in front of me oh Liz is not a normal teenager uh we want our
00:31:49
kids to be a teenager like Liz because you know she's not really like a teenager like like our cultural
00:31:58
understanding of teenagers should be rebellious or you should have problems with them or you
00:32:03
know uh I just wasn't like that yeah but anyways at College what did I do I watched well this is going to date me
00:32:13
DVDs people in the dorm who had collections of DVDs I'd be like oh when you're when I'm when you're at in a
00:32:21
class can I go in your room and watch stuff they're like yeah yeah we don't
00:32:25
care it's been hours it's been hours going through what what are these movies
00:32:29
just watching watching DVDs um and then during my summer breaks when I'd be working I usually ended up
00:32:37
working at um like ice cream shops and stuff like that so you would have hours during the day where you're just sitting
00:32:44
around waiting for people to come in to buy ice cream and we would have a little
00:32:48
TV in the back room and it was on VH I made sure I wouldn't let anyone change
00:32:54
it I'm like we're watching VH1 it's staying on VH1 and I'm watching all
00:33:00
those shows it's like I heart the I Heart the 80s I heart the 90s uh and I watched it
00:33:08
religiously and that's how I learned about culture of my generation yeah and now when I talk with
00:33:17
people who are my age I'm considered I think I'm an elderly Millennial I think
00:33:21
that's basically where I fall my my sister my older sister is X Gen X okay um so there's a lot of genx things that
00:33:29
I will I I feel a part of but basically I'm like the very oldest Millennial you
00:33:35
uh and when I get with other people my age or even people in their 30s and we talk about stuff and we all know these
00:33:45
things but I don't tell them that I know these things because I studied these
00:33:51
things yeah like I I decided I'm going to sit down and learn things as if I were
00:33:58
um like an immigrant or or an English language learner or something like you know I learned your
00:34:05
culture and now you've accepted me as one of you well and once you once you get kind of caught up too it's like well
00:34:12
then you become like you then know how to how to do the research and recognize like things that are going to be
00:34:19
significant cultural like impact moments right so it's like once you've kind of
00:34:25
learned that it's like okay like Madonna's like like a virgin and then like in the 90s you know it's like
00:34:31
friends is like massive in the 90s and like all you know you start to pick up all these things well then as time goes
00:34:36
on and you look at what's coming out today it's becomes easier to kind of
00:34:39
pick up like okay this is going to be really good this is going to be really good this is gonna be big everyone's
00:34:44
into this like I don't know it's it's different like I I don't know quite how
00:34:50
to explain it but it's it's cuz I I don't know about you but my my parents didn't to totally limit
00:34:58
everything I watched and listened to but they definitely had there was a stronger
00:35:02
emphasis on like you're going to listen to uh Christian music and you're GNA
00:35:06
watch more PG content I would say um and so there was definitely some moments lacking but my my parents were also
00:35:16
products of the 80s so there was some 80s that kind of bled in there just because you know they loved Prince and
00:35:22
Michael Jackson and Madonna so there was some things that bled through uh but there was a lot that was kind of like
00:35:29
okay like we you know what's the what's the Christian version of that right um
00:35:35
we're going to go with that one you know yeah um so my my parents were both Boomers
00:35:44
and I'd say in terms of TV and music in the house um TV the only channels we
00:35:52
really watched The Weather Channel uh AMC and Turner Classic Movies AMC when it was actual old
00:36:03
classic movies cuz now it's it changed it changed at some point right and then
00:36:08
the the Catholic channels like um what was what was that big Catholic uh EWTN I think it's still around but um and then
00:36:16
music it was if it was from 30s 40s 50s 60s 70s cool they never limited or thought oh 80s music I had no clue of
00:36:29
nothing anything I know from the 80s I I I researched and learned how to to to show
00:36:38
myself as an 80s child I I it was like it completely passed me by I knew absolutely nothing 90s um I got a little
00:36:46
bit more just because I was living with my sister who was a teenager and she went to normal school so okay you know
00:36:53
she'd go to school in the morning I'd sneak into her room which was forbidden
00:36:57
of you know forbidden territory of course uh she had Ena CDs or Smashing Pumpkin CDs or 10,000 Maniacs or you
00:37:05
know the the you know the sprinkling of 90s culture that I I picked up from from
00:37:12
her uh and oddly enough because of that how strict my parents were with movies and music uh I could sit down with
00:37:21
somebody now who you know I would consider old people or people who are my parents age
00:37:28
and I know all the stuff they do yeah like and they'll the people will be constantly amazed they'll be like how do
00:37:35
you know all this like I I I'm friends with people in their 60s and 70s like
00:37:39
actual real friends like I have friendships and we met um in random places in the world random countries and
00:37:48
um at some point when we become friends or we click they'll be like you're why
00:37:53
are you like this because you know you're old you're my you're old enough
00:37:57
to be my daughter like you're my son's age and then at some point I would say
00:38:02
well I was homeschooled and then they'd be like oh oh okay okay like okay that makes
00:38:11
sense now you're you're you're you're a little bit off because of the
00:38:18
homeschooling that's a weird statement I've brought it up on the show before of
00:38:22
that like when you when someone kind of points something out that's a little bit
00:38:26
different you say oh well I was homeschooled and then it's just like oh okay it's this weird like cultural thing
00:38:33
where it's just like it's just like you're get out of jail free card of like
00:38:37
I'm weird because of this thing right like and it's almost like a backhanded
00:38:41
compliment in a way because um and I've experienced that a lot because I've
00:38:46
lived for a long time outside the US and at different periods of time uh I'll
00:38:51
meet people and they'll say things like well you're so intelligent even though you're American
00:38:58
americ I be like oh well thanks I think or you they be like oh you're American
00:39:05
but you're not fat like H yeah okay and it's the same way with homeschooling you
00:39:12
know there's um the people I meet who know or have experienced the homeschooling world and there's this
00:39:21
instant understanding with them like okay we get it you know you m even even if maybe they were secular are
00:39:27
homeschooled maybe it wasn't so religious but still there's this level of understanding um but if someone has
00:39:34
never had anything to do with that world uh especially if they're older I think
00:39:39
now people like people who are more your generation or younger I don't think they
00:39:45
correct me if I'm wrong but I I feel like they think it they don't see it as
00:39:49
such a weird thing I don't know if it's more normalized now or not it's still a
00:39:54
little bit Fringe it's that's a good question I mean I get the like every now and then I get someone
00:40:05
who's like who something weird happens and and I go was I was homeschooled you
00:40:10
know something gets something weird gets brought up like oh I used to be a mime right and then and then I'm like oh well
00:40:15
I was homeschooled right and they go oh that it just explains that right it's
00:40:19
just like a it's just like a slap the Band-Aid on it be like okay that just just I get it you know and then other
00:40:25
times it other times people go oh I would have never I would have never guessed that right and it's and to to
00:40:33
kind of what we've been talking about is like I think part of it has to do with
00:40:37
when I got to college and I decided I want to work in the entertainment industry I also just did a lot of
00:40:43
research on like I wanted to understand everything I you know deep dives into like Taylor Swift and why she is who she
00:40:51
is today and like all you know pop stars and culture and why why do we idolize people and all these different things
00:40:56
right and so I think because I've learned to kind of mask certain aspects of who I am
00:41:04
I'm becoming more comfortable being like this is who I am and just you know whether you like it or not but but there
00:41:09
was a while where I would really mask it um and and yeah and then people would be
00:41:16
surprised when they would learn they would find out right and they'd be like
00:41:20
oh that's kind of surprising you seem so well adjusted and it's like well okay
00:41:24
but like I'm I'm still like person I still had friends like I learned you know what
00:41:31
is your idea of home it really boils down to kind of trying to figure out what that person's idea of homeschooling
00:41:36
is right yeah and when they talk about it it's like for a lot of people I think
00:41:40
they think of isolation and they think of oh you went to prom in the basement with your sibling and or you didn't have
00:41:47
prom like me yeah or you didn't have prom yeah yeah you know your education was just watching videos on PBS and you
00:41:56
know Magic School Bus and things like that and you know or you just learned like your mom taught you all of like how
00:42:02
to run a household so you know how to do laundry and chores and cook and all that
00:42:05
stuff but you don't actually know how to like do math and you know it's like
00:42:09
stuff like that I think when you I've I've just learned you have to kind of start to talk people
00:42:15
down from the ledge of like well what is your understanding of homeschooling and
00:42:19
then let me like kind of re-educate you on like here's actually what's happening
00:42:24
um and of course there will always be stereotypes around it but of course when you can back people off of the like no
00:42:30
we're not all quite like that you know it becomes a little bit easier some I
00:42:35
should also say um I mentioned that I I live outside the US I've been here in
00:42:40
France for almost 15 years now and um the homeschooling thing really only comes up when I'm talking to
00:42:49
North Americans you know Americans Canadians British people that I don't really I'm not going to say too much
00:42:56
because I know very little about homeschooling in England but it um I've it's never come up in any conversations
00:43:03
I've had with um people from the UK uh but people here in France or Italy or um I work a lot with different people
00:43:12
from different Western European countries uh first of all a high school never really comes up but when it
00:43:21
does uh usually they they want they they want to know something about a movie they saw an American movie that had High
00:43:30
School in it and so they asked me as the American that they know in their life I
00:43:34
have a question is this real like does this actually happen the things that I see in movies and TV shows right and
00:43:40
then I'll have to say well uh I was homeschooled so I didn't experience that
00:43:47
but I do know that this is real this is not real blah blah blah and when you tell a European that you're homeschooled
00:43:55
the reaction they don't have a stereotype because it's just not it's so
00:44:01
uncommon um it's not even on the radar like in in North America in the US we do
00:44:07
have a stereotype of homeschoolers right uh French people oh first of all they they want to know what exactly is that
00:44:16
they don't they're not even clear what is what does that mean you know and I
00:44:20
try to explain it to them and and I did some research I talked to someone at my job once um because I brought up me
00:44:27
being homeschooled and I thought it was illegal in France and it's not it's not
00:44:31
illegal but it's just very difficult to get the approval uh to H school it has
00:44:38
to be for very serious reasons usually something about the health of of the child or um if they have really severe
00:44:45
issues that um makes it much harder for them to be in a classroom with other kids you have to go through this whole
00:44:51
process of being approved by the government and you know a lot of paperwork well it's France of course
00:44:56
there's paperwork but but um they just don't know so mhm when it will pop up
00:45:03
randomly in conversation I was homeschooled oh okay and then everything moves on there is
00:45:10
no reaction there is no um assumption whereas when I'm talking to Americans immediate like you
00:45:20
said there's there's the people who have that strong stereotype and there's
00:45:24
people who maybe know a bit more about it um but I think that has contributed to
00:45:30
me sort of um not burying the fact that I'm homeschooled but just forgetting
00:45:38
that that even really is a part of me yeah and that was one of the things that surprised me when your channel
00:45:46
popped up the the almighty algorithm of YouTube I can't even tell you how or
00:45:52
where or why I I saw ex- homeschoolers Club and usually in the past I've never been
00:45:59
big about being like Oh homeschoolers I want to know about this or uh for whatever reason I clicked on it and then
00:46:06
I listened to a few things and a few of the interviews you had people were talking about being a homeschooler an ex
00:46:14
homeschooler and suddenly I was like oh my God I'm not the only one or maybe I have
00:46:23
this thing and it's not just because it's a LZ thing but it's a homeschooling
00:46:27
thing and there's thousands of other people in the US who are like me and I never even for whatever reason I never
00:46:35
even thought of the possibility of that it just never even entered into my mind and so that's that's why I contacted you
00:46:44
when I when I first came on the channel because it just blew me away I was like this is what even is this you know I did
00:46:51
and yeah um a few let's see I oh gosh I'm I feel like I'm old when I say this
00:46:58
I think probably 15 years ago 20 years ago uh I did briefly look into some ex homeschooling groups or I think there
00:47:07
was a Facebook group that I I briefly was a part of but it was very heavy stuff it was
00:47:13
like people who had been homeschooled and abused um by their family by The Homeschool Community were things had
00:47:21
gone terribly wrong and that had not happened to me I do know people that it happened to in my
00:47:28
Homeschool Group you know but it was uh obviously very um negative feelings toward homeschooling itself and the
00:47:36
whole experience and I understood that um but it didn't exactly fit with my situation which was more which is more
00:47:46
of a mixed bag of what I went through how I feel about now the pluses and the minuses and
00:47:53
I felt like the channel here when I was watching some of of your interviews some
00:47:58
of the with people it it it felt more balanced it felt like a mixed bag um talking about The Homeschool
00:48:07
experience you know yeah well thank you first first and foremost like that means
00:48:12
a lot because that was definitely much more it became much more the intention of
00:48:19
like I want to highlight the it's The Good the Bad and the Ugly right it's
00:48:23
like there you can have the wor experience in the world um and and I would love to
00:48:30
share that if that's your story like I and you want to put it out there I want
00:48:33
to give you the platform to do that but for me my experience was just it was much more positive um
00:48:41
and there's still I mean I think everybody has things that they would change about it and say Mom we should
00:48:46
have done this differently and I think a lot of The Homeschool moms too also look
00:48:49
back and they go I would have done this differently right it's like now we can
00:48:52
look back on it and and make different decisions but um we can't go back in time unfortunately um and so I do think
00:49:00
a lot of us have that mixed bag like you said of just kind of like looking at it
00:49:03
and going the positives and the negatives and and like you I also was like researching ex homeschooler groups
00:49:09
and a lot of times it was drama groups um and that's terrible and I I you know
00:49:13
and I'm glad that they are finding each other and working on things together and
00:49:16
hopefully seeking uh help uh but I just I knew I was like this needs to be a little bit more of a Level Playing Field
00:49:28
and just kind Neal because there's a lot of things we could talk we've talked
00:49:33
about like C switching and learning things posts us getting out and learning how to kind of like pretend to be normal
00:49:40
people and like um and all those kinds of things it's like that homeschooling
00:49:45
has impacted Us in that way where we have made decisions to do that with our lives right
00:49:51
um and so I think those conversations can be much more interesting and then also to your point of
00:49:58
like it's very it can feel very isolating it's like I knew I grew up with a bunch of homeschool kids however
00:50:05
I don't talk to any of them so it's really easy to start to feel very alone
00:50:09
in my experiences and looking back on it and going this was weird right like am I
00:50:13
crazy this was weird or this was strange or yeah this isn't normal you know and
00:50:18
so like that's part of why I wanted to start the show was to talk to people and
00:50:22
and let people know you're not alone yeah you're not alone hon yeah that's one of the biggest things
00:50:29
that um I hit I'd say it wasn't until my late 30s where I started feeling the
00:50:36
lack of having people to go to to talk about those years or like you said having a
00:50:44
question or feeling like am I the only one where this happened to me or do I remember this correctly because I'm even
00:50:52
the few people that I was more friendly with in The Homeschool Group who were younger than me
00:50:57
I lost contact with them over the years um when I stopped being a regular churchgoer I'd say the majority of
00:51:05
people dropped me and that's a whole well that's a whole another podcast
00:51:10
that's a whole another interview but that was one of the things that I recognized in in your channel that made
00:51:16
me start watching things and um helped fill that that that little Gap I was feeling yeah
00:51:27
and honestly I was a little je sometimes I watch the interviews and I'm jealous
00:51:31
because y'all were friends you talk about what you used to do and I remember
00:51:36
watching the kids who were younger than me who grew up with peers in the homeschooling group and seeing just how
00:51:43
different their experience was from mine and I'm glad I'm glad that people had
00:51:50
that I'm glad that it was a positive thing you know because I could I could definitely say that my
00:51:58
first instinct um is to say my homeschooling was a negative like that's my my very my gut
00:52:08
oh it was bad but then you know a nanc later I say oh well no I mean like we said before mixed bag uh
00:52:21
but I think part of the reason for that was the the Oddity of my particular situation in our group and with my
00:52:29
family and at that time of homeschooling history if you can call it that MH you know uh but
00:52:38
um honestly uh I I miss randomly meeting homeschooled people because that can happen when you're in the US you know
00:52:48
right yeah you know you're your homeschool radar goes off with someone at work or random people that you meet
00:52:54
or whatever and it will come up and it's nice it's nice because um uh it's
00:53:02
definitely a subgroup a subculture uh in the US I think anyways from my from my experience yeah no I I
00:53:10
definitely agree with you and I think to your point you brought this up earlier it's like yeah we need to figure
00:53:17
out our uh our gang signal or uh something some way to signal to other people because um because or way of
00:53:27
way of tying a scarf or something weird I don't know yeah uh we'll figure it out
00:53:32
if you have ideas um audience members drop them in the comments below um because yeah we need to figure this out
00:53:38
um are identifying marks to be like this is who we are um but uh yeah I think yeah
00:53:48
it's that's why again I wanted to do this show because I felt like I also like you kind of left
00:53:55
religion and left that Community that's built there right it's like religion is
00:54:00
can be your whole world it can be your whole community and everybody you know and when you leave it um it can be
00:54:07
really hard because I would say nine times out of 10 that that Community just leaves um they
00:54:13
don't want anything to do with you after that or you don't want anything to do
00:54:16
with them yeah it goes both ways um and and that's again isolating which again
00:54:21
goes back to all the homeschool stuff if it can be isolating and lonely and all these things and so I you know 2020 was
00:54:30
isolating for a lot of people and I think this show birthed out of that where I went I got to talk to my friends
00:54:35
again I gotta like get to know these people again and like really you know talk about just life but also what
00:54:44
we went through and and and now the fact that like people like yourself Liz are reaching out and being like Oh hey me
00:54:51
too I'm over here as well like yeah let's have a conversation this is it's
00:54:55
it's amazing making so many new friends so again thank you so much for reaching
00:54:59
out because uh one it put a smile on my face when I got that comment and your email and all that stuff but oh I also
00:55:06
was like oh my gosh I have to talk to this person this person like has has just I don't know I I was like I need to
00:55:14
hear this story that you know and so and I'm thankful that you wanted to come on
00:55:18
and share uh a piece of your story with the audience and hopefully give for those of us that were a little bit later
00:55:24
in the homes School group kind of a glimpse into the 80s and the 90s of homeschooling um
00:55:30
and and and who you are today so I mean I'm trying to I'm trying to think of what else to ask you because
00:55:40
there's so many other ways to go but um yeah but yeah I I will I'll just say
00:55:44
that thank you for so much for coming and sharing is there any I don't know story or thing that has has we've been
00:55:50
talking has popped in that you're like oh my God I gotta I gotta leave the people with this well this popped up
00:55:55
okay it's not funny uh but I was it came into my head in the minutes before we
00:56:02
started the call because I was nervous and thinking okay what what what can I talk about or if he asked me about this
00:56:09
or that and you brought up 2020 and you know the covid situation a lot of people
00:56:15
isolated and during that time for a couple of months my my two oldest kids uh were at home they usually go to
00:56:24
school down the street from where we live but the schools were on lockdown here in France too for a while and so
00:56:31
the teachers were emailing you know this is what you do on the books and um it was a moment where I clicked into like
00:56:41
Liz the homeschooler I knew I knew how to do this I also I I do you know I studied
00:56:47
education I have a master B in education and it's it's been a few years um uh
00:56:52
teaching and I'm still in sort of an education adjacent field with my job and
00:56:57
it was just like riding a bike uh but at the same time I had a very clear understanding
00:57:06
that I don't want to be riding this bike right now I'm being forced to do
00:57:12
this but um honestly it gave me a a new appreciation of I don't know if you want to call it
00:57:23
strength perseverance whatever of our parents usually our moms because our moms are usually the ones who had the um
00:57:30
you know who bore the brunt of the the education homeschooling because I did not have the
00:57:38
patience I mean it drove me bonkers I don't know if it was of course there's
00:57:43
the added stress of the pandemic and I actually had a baby during a lockdown during the pandemic so I had that too my
00:57:50
my third was born during that time but um it was just another reminder of the bag of homeschooling and going through
00:58:00
periods where I'll be angry or I really um will be more negative towards adult
00:58:06
to my life who made decisions during that time and who uh raised me in that specific bubble
00:58:14
but then something will happen later in life and as you grow as you're an adult
00:58:19
and you experience these different life things you look back and something clicks and you realize okay I definitely
00:58:25
learned something from this or you appreciate or you realize how hard it was for the the grownup because we only
00:58:34
see it through our lens as a as as kids you know and we're looking back at the
00:58:40
experience um but it's really only part of the story right and as I get older
00:58:45
and as I'm a parent um with my own three children even though they go to regular
00:58:51
school uh my homeschooling background does keep on coming up and it makes me appreciate or um have
00:59:03
less patience with regular school or the way things are done but just overall it's a part of who we are as ex-
00:59:10
homeschoolers and I really think as we go through different steps in our life whatever that may be you know whether we
00:59:19
have kids or not uh I would just encourage people and i' I've watched a lot of the interview so I
00:59:27
I think most of the people you've talked to I get a feeling are really um in tune
00:59:33
to learning things and paying attention to to where they've been and you know
00:59:38
what's going on uh but ex ex- homeschoolers everywhere just be proud of being an ex-
00:59:50
homeschooler even if it was a traumatic or awful EXP experience which I know that exists for sure um I think it's
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something to really appreciate about our lives uh and ultimately I think it makes
01:00:08
us stronger and just as amazing and interesting as everyone else honestly that was
01:00:16
beautifully said and I wholeheartedly agree with you on that because yeah and in talking with everybody that I've
01:00:23
talked with and hearing all the different stories it's like those experiences have shaped us into
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who we are today and so be proud of that and be proud of the person you are today
01:00:32
and choose to make decisions going forward for your life that are like that are great you choose
01:00:39
not to homeschool your kids you also live in a country where it's a lot harder to do that but you know that
01:00:43
that's for you that's not the move but you're still very involved mom and love
01:00:48
your kids and obviously want them to turn out the best they possibly can yeah um yeah and you know and so anyway
01:00:56
that's lovely this has been a great conversation and yeah I actually I can go on and on and on so we should
01:01:03
probably you should cut me off now yeah I was looking at the time I was like I was like oh we just hit an hour um but
01:01:10
Liz this has been amazing and I'm I'm so glad to now have you as an ex- homeschooler friend uh me too I'm so
01:01:18
glad I found you all yeah yes uh yeah ladies and gentlemen this has been this week's episode of the ex
01:01:25
homeschoolers Club and if you enjoyed it let me know um I've got more more homeschool kids from the 80s and the 90s
01:01:31
coming very soon um and so you'll get to hear more Amazing Stories like lizz's
01:01:37
very coming again very soon but uh if you want to reach out to me there's two
01:01:41
ways you can do it you can either hit me up on Instagram it's exhs Club um or you
01:01:47
can shoot me an email at exhs [email protected] uh I love to hear from you guys obviously it connects us all um and uh
01:01:56
so yeah this has been Dax homeschoolers Club until next week peace [Music] [Music]