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Gary welcome to the club welcome to you've been a part of this club for a while now Club welcome to ex
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homeschoolers Club um you've been like one of my best friends for the longest time uh we've
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known each other since we were like 10 or 11 something like that we met at aana and uh aana or is it a wanas I don't
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know does it exist anymore who knows good question good question if anyone does know what it is it basically was
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like Bible Boy Scouts Bible boy and girl that's such a good way to describe it
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yeah yeah like during the middle of the week and yeah we would like learn scripture and like recite scripture and
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get marit badge type stuff and do Pinewood Derpy and play games and um but it was like co-ed it was like boys and
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girls uh together so anyway that's I know that's how we met originally I think right
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I honestly don't remember meeting you there no I remember I really don't
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remember where we met I just assume I have a bad memory but I just assume I met all of my homeschool friends at like
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Park days or like Co-op meetings but I don't have like a specific memory of where I met most people okay yeah so it
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could have been A's I mean it probably was aana honestly yeah I guess some homeschoolers that was a big hub for
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like a lot of The Homeschool Community was like you know uh yeah cuz it was like local and at a church and of course
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everybody loved to church um so but yeah but we like have known each other for what it's like almost like 18 years at
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this point something like that something like that we're heading into 30s soon um
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can't wait I can't wait full-fledged adults but um yeah well I'm glad you're
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here and um me too we so tell me tell me a little bit about like being a homeschool kid like were you
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homeschooled all the way through I know you've got siblings were they also homeschooled all the way through um do
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you know why your parents decided to homeschool you that kind of stuff like tell us a little bit about like growing
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up as a homeschool kid that's good um yes homeschooled my entire life and I think all my siblings were but it kind
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of depends on how you define homeschooling because I was homeschooled for every grade right right so I did all
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of them but then some of my siblings and friends just stopped doing school at home at like 14 or 15 and just started
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going to college and so I don't know if you would consider them being homeschooled like their whole lives
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because like for high school they weren't homeschooled they were College schooled right you they were like
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Geniuses so they you know tested out of everything I was not a genius um yeah I also went I didn't go all the way
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through I did second grade through high school but um so I did have a taste I did yeah I had a taste of like regular
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school life so those first couple years of homeschooling were super tough for me
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because I already knew what it was like to be around your friends every day and like go to class and then go to lunch
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and go do all these different things so then all of a sudden it was just like I'm at home all day long with my
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mom we were renovating the house kind of a thing so it was like just not a conducive place to be like learning and
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my mom wanted to like kill us all the time and like it was just stressful it was just like stressful life stuff going
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on at all periods right um and so then she started meeting parents like like your parents and and other homeschool
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parents and they like seem so much more like together with like oh yeah we have this structure and this plan and maybe
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that's not the reality of what was going on but it seemed so much more structured
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and then you know and then we started being friends right so then it's like okay now I don't feel alone anymore like
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I have kind of a class room experience again to some degree yeah yeah yep so homeschooled my whole life life siblings
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homeschooled SL col and technically I did go to college for the last uh semester of my senior year so I did half
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of my senior year and then I did some school at home for the last half of that senior year and then some of my classes
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were out of college so kind of half and half but it was really just for one semester when I was 17 um and that was
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traumatic but it was it was good still too like I needed it to happen um yeah but yeah a little bit traumatic and then
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why I was homeschooled I really have never asked my parents that question I would assume for several different
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reasons my grandparents started one of the most popular homeschooling schools back in the 70s or 80s or something like
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that okay um so they were like the pioneers of homeschooling like down in San Diego LA area uh Grace Christian
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School is the school they started and it's like still around today that was like their main job is they just managed
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a giant Co-op of like curriculum and and students all over I guess the Southern California area and other people I think
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like were a part of it too outside of California but majority I think was in California I don't really know how it
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works never really asked a lot of questions because I never really been super interested in that but um yeah so
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my my mom was homeschooled um and then I guess my parents from what I know they just
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talked about it and they're like yeah like based off of some religious ideas as well as some uh
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social biases um on top of I have dyslexia and I was the first child so I think they went that route because of
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that um just some of my struggles as like a you know four or fiveyear old they decided to home school but again
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I've never like directly asked them but I think that's mostly why and I think
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that's a a pretty Amar sentiment for most parents that homeschooled around that time were for a mix of some of
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those reasons that's what I was going to say is like I feel like in talking to
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friends and then like as I've been prepping to do this podcast and like talking to my folks and other homeschool
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parents it's like why did you do this like and it tends to be religion and also my child has I hate to say a
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learning disability but I mean that's kind of that is what it's labeled but
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it's a learning difference right and so putting them in a traditional classroom
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is just not going to be conducive to them actually being the the smart person that they are right yeah that's crazy
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that you're you're I didn't know your mom was homeschooled and you know and
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that your grandparents kind of like not pushed her into that but like were you know had raised her in that and then
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were had done the school because my grandparents were kind of the Catalyst for my parents even thinking about
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homeschooling because my grandma was just very obsessed with this idea of like hey you need to bring education to
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your house you need to all these things and so she would my mom like books and articles and all this stuff and my mom
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was like why would I ever want to do that like I have you know like you send the kids off to school they go to school
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I get to do my thing I get to watch Oprah and then the kids come home and then you know we go grocery shopping
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whatever and so yeah so that shift for her was like really hard because she had never done that before you know she was
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um even though she had gone to school to be a teacher she was like at that point she
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was like I'm not going to teach like this is you know I'm stay home Mom that's that's my that's my job so so you
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have you have three siblings um and so like and you guys are spaced out pretty decent right I mean there's what like a
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threeyear gap between each of you roughly yeah I mean something like that between each of them uh more or less a
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year and a half between me and my sister and then the Gap gets bigger from there child so let me ask you this
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because like I know because my sister and I are three years apart and there were certain points where I
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feel like we were doing like the same school workor was that like true in your house too where it was like you know
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we're like all in the same class like yeah there are certain things like usually with things like math right
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you're maybe at a higher level the older you are but like other things it was
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like we're just all at the same level was that kind of a reality at your house
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there's definitely some uh some aspects of that like if there's you know you're
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going to go on a nature walk together and learn about olog something like that like you're going to go together so you
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can kind of kill two birds with one stone when it came to a lot of the curriculum like you said on the more I
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guess strenuous topics like math and history and stuff it would usually be separate but there was some like social
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studies stuff that was together home economic stuff that was together I guess things you could just teach kids
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together they were together especially with me and my sister only being one or two grades apart at a time time
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uh yeah it would sometimes overlap because we weren't we it was hard like we weren't just one grade necessarily
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like we would be different grades in different subjects based off of where we tested at that's like how the school did
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it so like if you excelled in one area you were like a higher grade in that area and if you like needed help in a
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different area you would just be lower yeah and so yeah we were in different places I guess at times but so some
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stuff we do together most stuff we wouldn't do together yeah I don't yeah
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no I I feel you yeah cuz it was the same it was the same at my house yeah there was certain yeah nature walk or we're
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going to go do this it's like yeah you're all together and then yeah same
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deal it's like if you're dumb in this area I don't want to say dumb if you
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were lower in this level like you know you just sat where you sat right it's
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just like you just you just made it happen and it wasn't until really high school where my parents were like no you
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got to be like at these levels right it's like you know High School is a set
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predetermined like you're going to do algebra albra 2 geometry you know kind
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of a thing and these specific Sciences um that was mostly because I was heading towards college and so it was like you
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kind of I needed those things to to get into college right um and that's I think
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one of the things a lot of people worry about with like their kids is like like getting canah home school
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could get into college the answer is obviously yes we both went to college yeah um you know so obviously yes and
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we're both brilliant um not to toot our own heart but we're Geniuses absolutely
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yeah Mak money we could definitely put a man on the moon if we tried hard enough had enough money yeah yeah and
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and we have enough money yeah I mean we bring back NASA it's not a problem um
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easy did you ever have an experience let me phrase it like this did you ever have
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an experience where you kind of realize like I'm a homeschool kid and like I'm
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the weird one out where you're like you know maybe you're around non homeschool kids public school kids
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whatever and you realize like oh shoot like I'm the odd man out in this situation like I'm the
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weirdo I think that was the most real lived experience of my entire like childhood all of the time like it was
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the main thing that I was concerned with all of the time I let me think about the
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first time I ever experienced that because I would experience that Weekly yeah um it doesn't have to be the first
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time but I just remember like even going getting to college I quit telling people
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that I was a homeschool kid because I instantly got the like oh that makes sense and I was like I hated that that
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answer right it's like because then you feel you're like I already feel so
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self-conscious right and then you you tell somebody this thing about yourself and then they're like oh well yeah that
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that checks out like you're a weirdo you know the thing is there are homeschoolers like there's people I meet
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and it's so easy to smell homeschooler like yeah I I've met so many people and
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I feel like I'm so good at guessing who's homeschooled and who's not does
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they they can be completely normal like wearing completely normal clothes acting
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normally it just there's something that's that happens to you when you're
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homeschooled that you forever just smell that way to people um and so I'll meet
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people from just across the world and i' be like you were homeschooled weren't
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you they be like how did you know I was like I don't know how I knew like you
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can just tell but there there are public school kids that smell like that a little bit um for for different reasons
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um but anyways uh back on track a little bit I think when I was six or seven and the the main thing
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for me I think that that I felt differentiated in wasn't necessarily that I was a homeschooler but more so
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was that I struggled reading at like a really young age and so when everybody else was like able to read I was like
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you know six or seven or whatever and I just struggled with it a lot and I think
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in my mind just as I'm thinking the first time I felt that way I was five or six and was still like
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struggling like to to grasp some of the elementary like concepts of reading and I had this like workbook I was going
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through and all I had to do was read the sentences on one page and that would take me probably like half an hour or
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something like that like a long time and I remember I had a friend who was two years older than me that like lived on
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my block and he would come over and he'd be like can da play right now um which is
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also kind of strange for like a nine-year-old to be asking a six-year-old to play but whatever um I
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guess not that weird so he would ask me to play and I'd be like I can't like I
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have to work on this like page I'm reading and he'd be like well let me do
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it for you and he just like read it in like a minute and I'd be like awesome
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like I can't do that right you feel dumb right you're just like oh shoot yeah
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part of it was that he was older but you know when you're when you're six like
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you can't really differentiate age that well it's just mostly on skill and
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you're like Frick I just don't have this skill that everybody else does and so
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there was that aspect but of course there's kids that they realize you're
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homeschool because you just don't know what social norms are most of the time
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you have like just a built-in autism that yeah is just automatic that I don't
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know uh and you just don't know social cues so there's definitely a period
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where you think things are normal because you just grew up with your parents and maybe your friends in your
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neighborhood and then you go to church or camp or some social event and you meet other kids and they immediately
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know you're weird and they you know their kids they tell you immediately that you're weird and you're like oh my
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God like my world be was falling apart I don't know what to do yeah 100% so I had
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that pretty young and and and the the reading thing combined with uh just not being super socially Adept at the
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beginning created like a a hyper fixation with having to be accepted so that I could be loved um in me and uh
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I think I became pretty normal but I became pretty normal because I had massive amounts of anxiety about being
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normal every day and I don't know why that was just projection at the young age from kids I wanted be friends or
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something like that um stems from I totally agree with that and I I understand that because like I said when
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I got to college I had a couple people be like they could sniff it out right and that had happened before like people
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had been like oh well yeah you're obviously a homeschool kid and thankfully I had a professor who sat me
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down and was just like yo you got to learn to chill out and I was like what does that mean and she's like you just
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got to be a good hang like just know how to just be in the room and just like listen and be cool and like
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don't be the pck me like just be there like you know you're too cool for school
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kind of a thing and and that was a big shift for me because like you said as a homeschool
00:16:09
kid like you want when you get to those events that are like a church event or camp or whatever and all the other kids
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already know each other because they all go to school together they're all friends and they automatically pick you
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out as the weird one because they've never seen you before right and then they're like well why have I never seen
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you at school well because I do school at home well why do you do school at home well that's weird you know and and
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right and so if you can learn to kind of like just be cool and exist in that you
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know Universe it's it got it got it gets easier let's just say that it gets so
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much easier and you know one of the things that I think was good by the time we were like in High School junior high
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too was that there was a lot more Community within the homeschool like group like I don't know if it was this
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way for you or not but like in the early years of being a homeschool kid there's
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it's a lot of isolation at least for me it was where we're just at home for like
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days at a time you know and go out to go grocery shopping but there's no friends
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there's you know there's the kid on the Block but like you don't have friends
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you know you don't have other kids who relate to you in any way but by the time
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we were in high school it was like okay the the hes School community in our hometown like was big it was it was
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thriving it was huge it was huge yeah it was huge um yeah I talked to kids who yeah they had nothing and you know they
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grew up in like a farm town or something and it's like right for them to have
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friends is like ridiculously hard where it's like we lived five minutes down the
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street from each other you know like yeah once we got a driver's license it's
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like we just come over yeah exactly that's crazy speaking of the uh I guess learning how to be normal in social
00:17:54
situations I this has got to be the perfect example of of what you're talking about um I guess combining
00:18:01
actually the last two things you talked about I was in Thailand one time and there was this kid that was the son of
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like a missionary that was there and I wasn't staying with them or I didn't
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know them nothing right I was in a hotel I was in a hotel lobby and I guess this
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kid's a white kid and I was a white person in Thailand by myself and so I'm
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just sitting in the lobby at at 12:30 p.m. sorry a.m. like at night like in the middle of the night I'm just like
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watching YouTube video there's nobody else there and this kid like comes down
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or like comes in the room and there's like a few chairs in this Lobby or whatever and he walk he sees me and
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walks directly over and sits down across from me and stares directly at me and I
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felt like he was going to try to kill me or something like that like it's the
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middle of the night and this like 12-year-old just has all the confidence in the world and he just sitting across
00:19:01
from me like he doesn't know who I am and we're in a foreign country like he
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just has all this confidence and and he goes what are you doing and I had headphones inside I take
00:19:14
a headphone I was like I'm watching YouTube and he goes you would be watching YouTube wouldn't you and I was
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like all right I put my headb back in and I Tred my best to ignore him uh but eventually we start talking and he's
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just a homeschool kid who lives there he's like there from China or something
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um but just like the the sheer like just they have no idea how to act and you either have that stupid confidence where
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you just can't be normal and no one wants to be around you because you have so much confidence or you're so anxiety
00:19:48
written that you can't speak at all like yeah the two extremes of course but I
00:19:53
meet people like that all the time it's crazy it's honestly stresses me out but
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because we grew up in it too there's so much understanding and empathy and Grace for
00:20:00
those who are struggling with it still absolutely yeah I know homeschool family here that I've started like connecting
00:20:07
with a little bit and I picked them out of the crowd so fast and I was like oh my gosh I I understand and I relate and
00:20:17
like let me go talk to you and like be your friend and stuff because awesome it's not to like let me whight my way
00:20:25
into your life and save you or whatever but like the goal of this show and the goal of having conversations like this
00:20:32
is like one it's so funny to like talk about growing up and like you know talk
00:20:36
about the awkwardness and all those things but like it gets better right and so yeah the goal is that there's The
00:20:43
Good the Bad and the Ugly right there's the good stuff that happened from being
00:20:47
homeschooled like the ability to go to college early right like the ability to you know have close relationships with
00:20:54
family and friends um during times when normally you would be in a school environment right um there's the bad
00:21:03
stuff for some people where it's like Mom and Dad really had no idea what they
00:21:06
were doing and they were just kind of like winging it um and hoping that we were smart enough to catch on you know
00:21:13
and then of course there's there's sometimes the ugly of like the traumatic
00:21:17
like you said anxiety of like I need to be accepted right um I had that too I looking back I still have that you know
00:21:25
and that's like a traum piece that we carry with us and we you know when we go
00:21:29
into a room it's like if no one's talking to me like I'm the odd man out
00:21:32
that's just the reality of like how I walk into a room is I know I'm the odd
00:21:37
person out automatically um everyone else in here is normal and it's not until you kind of
00:21:43
put yourself out there and have that confidence to go just go talk to somebody um you mentioned kind of like
00:21:50
growing up with dyslexia and like being at a young age and like you know the neighbor kid comes over and he just
00:21:56
reads it and you just you're like I feel stupid like I feel so dumb so like and
00:22:01
we talked a little bit about like Mom and Dad potentially picking homeschooling as a way to kind of like
00:22:07
you know give you an education that was more tailored towards that struggle so talk a little bit about that like talk
00:22:14
about some of like the struggle but like what are like tips and tricks that you've learned like to kind of like come
00:22:22
back that and like um you know cuz I'm not dyslexic so the the way that people
00:22:28
explain in it to me is that like if you look at a page in a book it's just like
00:22:32
moving letters basically and maybe that's not super accurate but like flipping certain letters to have other
00:22:39
sounds and things like that and so you know is there anything out there that's
00:22:43
like helped you kind of because you're an adult you live on your own you know
00:22:46
you're totally sufficient um yeah talk about that yeah first off there's from
00:22:54
my knowledge I had a a specialist tell me this one time that's the only thing
00:22:57
I'm going off of they said that there's hundreds of different types of Dyslexia it's
00:23:03
technically just a coding issue with your mind like how fast um or how different you decode shapes and so
00:23:10
that's why you can get it with like numbers and stuff too just calcula or whatever the name is
00:23:15
um but I don't necessarily see the letters moving around the page I just have a really hard time like focusing
00:23:25
like on certain words and like getting the meaning from them so it just takes me a lot longer to like decode the
00:23:32
meaning specifically just from letters um which is weird because like I'm really good like a geometry like I did
00:23:38
when I was homeschool I did geometry in like two months like I just finished it super fast so it's not necessarily like
00:23:45
all like shapes or symbols are hard for me to decode but just specifically uh words for some reason because I was also
00:23:52
good at math and stuff growing up and in college anyways so that's just I guess
00:23:58
my type of um of Dyslexia things that help me I mean I really don't know if homeschooling
00:24:07
helped me I think it did give me some like space to breathe and grow and try to uh like learn on my own without the
00:24:16
pressure of like kids around me um making fun of me as much but at the same time I just thought it was stupid for my
00:24:26
whole life until I got to college and then as soon as I got to college and like just started getting A's and stuff in my
00:24:32
classes I was like oh like because I had to work so much harder at learning this
00:24:37
thing I just have a way better work ethic when it comes to school so I'm just actually trying in these classes
00:24:42
when no one else is really and getting good grades because I'm trying harder
00:24:45
not necessarily because I'm like way smarter and so I don't know I don't know
00:24:50
necessarily what helped me and what didn't help me would I have been the same person if I went to public school
00:24:56
maybe maybe I would have had different types of help uh maybe I would have felt way more
00:25:00
self-conscious and not tried at all and just thought I was stupid and never have
00:25:04
gone to college like I don't really don't know what the outcome of that would have been I think for
00:25:10
me homeschooling was helpful but at the same time you can get away with a lot when you're homeschooled and so there's
00:25:20
it's really hard like to be to work on something you're bad at and so when
00:25:24
you're not absolutely forced to do stuff you're just not gon to work very hard on
00:25:29
it but that also applies in public school like nowadays I I work in public schools like three days a week and kids
00:25:37
will like teachers are just passing kids even if they do zero work like they just
00:25:42
don't want them in their grade next year until they're passing them so they they
00:25:45
can just Skip by and not do anything anyway so I really don't know if normal
00:25:50
like public school private school would have been better for me than uh homeschool I think pros and cons
00:25:55
necessarily when it comes to like what could other kids do that like have those learning
00:26:01
disabilities on the homeschooling side I think if your parents know what they're
00:26:06
doing which I think might had a a pretty good idea um you can get some help usually there's Specialists that you can
00:26:12
go to for both public and private school and homeschool kids that can help a lot
00:26:17
too nowadays there's so much more information for people than there was when we were growing up that you could
00:26:23
just watch a YouTube video like your parents can be so much more informed about how to teach you now that like if
00:26:28
my mom could just watch a whole bunch of YouTube videos about what dyslexia is like when I was five like it'd be so
00:26:34
much easier for me and so much easier for her now homeschooling me you know so there are a ton more advantages for
00:26:39
parents if they're you know on it um as teachers of their kids in homeschool to
00:26:45
like do a good job are they gonna do that maybe maybe not I don't know um so
00:26:51
I'm not sure Point like you bring up like the idea of like parents being involved in education and I think that's
00:26:57
a big thing that we're seeing there's a lot of debate around like school right now right of like
00:27:06
books are getting banned this country is like you know our education policies are
00:27:10
not great in this country um to say the least um I live in a really terrible State our education is like one of the
00:27:16
lowest like we're in the 40s when it comes to like education levels um yeah so but I always like when I talk to
00:27:25
people who are thinking about homeschooling their kids I'm like you as the parent are like you want to be
00:27:32
heavily involved so like even if your kid goes to public school like having parents who are involved in your
00:27:38
education is super helpful right it's super they care it's them showing like I
00:27:42
care about you um as as a kid right and like we both had parents like that right
00:27:48
who were like when we struggled with something how do we fix this how do we get you to understand this right so
00:27:54
let's try this method let's do this and that's I think why the beauty of like if you do have a a
00:28:01
learning disability like dyslexia like add like ADHD right because it's more of
00:28:06
a one-on-one approach with homeschool kids there's like your parents have the
00:28:12
ability to be like okay this isn't working so let's just change the method
00:28:16
if you're in a public school room with 12 to 20 to 30 kids the teacher does not
00:28:22
have the time to do that they are juggling way too much right and so um so even if you're your kid does have to go
00:28:28
to public school being able to take time at home with them to like sit down and be like okay why are you struggling in
00:28:34
this area let's get you the help you need super important you graduated early
00:28:38
from high school so you're a genius we've already we've already established
00:28:42
this and you went to college tell me about your college experience because yours is a little bit different than
00:28:46
mine I left immediately after school After High School moved to college did College in three years and walked away
00:28:54
with a degree I know your path went a little bit different and you like did career for a while and like different
00:28:59
things like that so like talk about that and talk about like wanting because you
00:29:02
just you just graduated with a bachelor's degree so like you know congratulations first of all but uh talk
00:29:09
about like the decision to to do that yeah so in high school started college and that was really the H such a
00:29:20
big turning point for me in my life because I went from thinking I was Dumb and not like wanting to do school at all
00:29:27
not wanting to go to college anything like that to just doing it for the last semester of uh my high school experience
00:29:34
and after the first or second day can't remember I was only taking two classes I
00:29:40
had an art class that was six hours long on Friday morning um and I wanted to end
00:29:46
it all every class and I was terrible at drawing also and I had a math class and
00:29:52
I walked out of the second math class because the first one was just like an intro SL syllabus or something and
00:29:59
literally cried I was like I don't know what I'm doing I'm an idiot like I don't
00:30:05
know how to learn like this is so overwhelming I also didn't realize that college because I went to a community
00:30:11
college was going to be like half like high school graduates half like military slash moms slash anybody else that
00:30:20
wanted to go to school and so I just wasn't ready for the demographics I wasn't ready for the content and my mom
00:30:26
was like you can quit like just stick it out until like the drop date and like see how you do
00:30:32
and I was like I really don't want to do that but I guess I'll hum humiliate
00:30:37
myself for like a month just to I guess see where it goes and so I did and after
00:30:42
a month I realized everybody else knew just as much as I did in the class and that's why they were there and I was
00:30:50
like oh I don't have to just know this like going into it and so I realized I
00:30:53
was just there to learn like and I can learn I just have to take the pressure off myself and and like I started to
00:30:59
gain confidence in myself as you know I'd take a test and I wouldn't fail it
00:31:02
and I would do my homework and I would do a good job and I'd get A's and B's
00:31:06
and stuff like that um and I finished the class and got an A and like as soon as I did that I was like holy crap like
00:31:12
maybe I'm not who I thought I was because I was just living life academically in a vacuum of just me and
00:31:18
the computer or me and my parents depending on you know whatever subject I was doing so that was a huge like confidence
00:31:26
boost and honestly like almost like personality changer mostly based off of confidence for me and realizing I wasn't
00:31:34
uh dumb that I could learn and I really started to love learning at that point and just like started learning as much
00:31:39
as I could in a lot of different areas and college was fun I in three years or no in two and a half years I got a
00:31:45
couple different Associates degrees um one in Psychology one in Communications and then uh I quit and started working
00:31:52
for ym for seven years or something and then the last three years I've just gone
00:31:56
to school at night and have just done school asynchronously and so all of the pain that all of the current high
00:32:05
schoolers are feeling of going to school over zoom and stuff for a while I can also empathize with um it is
00:32:12
not not a good way to learn in any shape or form in my mind uh but it does allow
00:32:20
you to get somewhat of an education uh on your own time which is really helpful for a lot of people
00:32:26
because I couldn't have gotten a degree just like working normal hours I can't
00:32:30
go to school right um so that was really helpful just graduated all that kind of
00:32:34
stuff really thankful for it and that I was able to do it and all that kind of stuff honestly education is so strange
00:32:40
at different uh at different ages of life because when you're at least for me
00:32:46
and this is my experience that I've seen with a lot of kids just no one wants to
00:32:49
do school when you're young like you just you just can't wait till it's over
00:32:54
you're like I just can't wait till either the day is over and I can do whatever I want want or um Summer's here
00:33:00
or I'm finally out of school like everybody just wants to quit and then when you're older you're like just get
00:33:06
me a podcast so I could learn more please like I just need some time to learn can you please just let me not
00:33:12
work so I can just learn for a little bit and it just switches so much I don't
00:33:17
know how to solve that problem honestly it just seems so funny to me that iomy of like once you get out of school you
00:33:22
start working you just want to learn again and you just want to do some interesting stuff and when you're in
00:33:26
high school you're like please just give me out of here I just need Freedom you
00:33:30
know what's funny is and um what's funny is that like my parents did this thing
00:33:37
where when I got to high school there was they would ask me what I wanted to learn about right so like that's this is
00:33:43
the other Joy of like being a homeschool kid was that like I got really into World War II so for a year I did history
00:33:51
that was all World War II based history I got really into Pirates I did history all based around Pirates so
00:33:58
it things like that right it's like your that's the joy of homeschooling not
00:34:02
every parent does that but like you can encourage your kid to like pursue that passion right it also goes with like it
00:34:10
you know we were both musical people we did bands together we were in church band together like we had parents that
00:34:16
like pushed us to like pursue things we were interested in whether it was in school or out of school and so you you
00:34:25
talk about like yeah like once you are out in the real world and you have a job you're like now I just want to learn but
00:34:30
the things you want to learn about typically are things that you're like I'm interested in this you know where
00:34:35
like high school and somewhat of college I mean College you get to decide what you want to study but after a while
00:34:41
you're kind of like locked in right you do two years or something you're like I
00:34:44
might as well just like finish this out uh but you now we're at a stage where
00:34:50
it's like whatever you want to learn it you can go learn it right there's any
00:34:55
any Outlet you can go find information find information a course a book a podcast YouTube videos around that thing
00:35:02
and learn about it homeschooling does a good job of like I don't know if it was the case for you
00:35:09
it was the case for me that like there were points where my parents would just like hand me a textbook and be like here
00:35:15
like just do this kind of a thing and then it's all on you to just like figure
00:35:20
out like I'm gonna do x amount in this day you know you said you did uh geometry in like two months right it's
00:35:27
like you were good at it so you just went ham at it uh but you know there's that kind of like I don't know did your
00:35:35
did your parents do that at all for you like where you know you were like interested in something and they like P
00:35:40
maybe not pushed you but just like encouraged you to be like oh yeah pursue that thing like whether it's education
00:35:45
or not most of the academic things that I did when I was in junior 9 high school
00:35:49
I have just blacked out of my mind in in general I don't blame you just because
00:35:54
they weren't important to me then yeah so like I learn I learned learned a lot
00:35:58
but I don't really remember the process of learning like I have some images ingrained in my mind um but of course my
00:36:03
parents were super supportive as most parents are who homeschool their kids they obviously care about their kids and
00:36:09
what they're learning which is why they're homeschooling them in the first
00:36:11
place um whether or not certain parents do a good job of it um that's uh left to
00:36:17
be said for some of them but I think my parents did a good job and yeah if I was
00:36:21
interested in a sport they let me do it if I was interested in music they let me
00:36:24
do it uh they always wanted me to to love what I was doing and stuff but then there's stuff you don't get to choose
00:36:29
you don't get to choose if you do math or not you don't get to choose if you
00:36:31
write papers or not you know for English like it's just stuff you got to do uh so
00:36:36
there is an amount of flexibility um I really can't remember if there was any
00:36:40
specific areas I really wanted to learn in or not I think I'm most was just interested in sports and music and stuff
00:36:46
like that that I kind of did extracurricularly yeah yeah I know that yeah tennis was like huge in our
00:36:54
hometown that was a big one and I know you like lifeguard and um I tell people all the time that my sport was Airsoft
00:37:04
and that took place at your house most of the time so like to set the scene der's house growing up which his parents
00:37:10
still live there it's just some beautiful house it's on a river you know
00:37:14
it sometimes that River dries up but there's like this whole backyard jungle
00:37:18
that was just like perfect for like Airsoft paintball like hide and seek like it was amazing backyard but we
00:37:25
would go play a oft I don't know we played multiple times a month I know that like at some points it was just
00:37:31
like every single week uh yeah do yeah exactly just like be outside and like shoot each other with
00:37:39
plastic pellets like of course that sounds you know freaking sick so but I always tell people I'm
00:37:45
like my parents that was my sport so they funded it you know like that was my you know in the same way they would pay
00:37:51
you know if I wanted to play football or tennis or anything like that I wanted to
00:37:55
play Airsoft so I'd go play Airsoft at der's house yeah so much fun yeah some
00:38:01
of the best memories playing Airsoft in the backyard uh have you seen pictures of my backyard recently I have not no
00:38:08
dude unrecognizable zero zero Shrubbery all rocks the creek has completely moved
00:38:16
like the middle of like I don't know I don't want to talk about too much but
00:38:21
it's just completely changed you gotta look at pictures my dad posts on Instagram all the time okay it's very
00:38:25
different I'll check it out yeah no it's so it's so weird to like go back and see
00:38:30
people's houses or like my mom sends me you know videos of like us as kids she
00:38:35
just sent me a video of you and I doing our homeschool talent show and we played
00:38:41
uh we played a song I can't remember what song is but yeah Home by Edward Sharp in the magnetic zero I think and
00:38:52
um it was just fun she SS it to me like every year when it pops up on her timeline just like oh yeah remember this
00:38:59
and uh so yeah you and I were in a couple different bands together I know that I just saw a picture on my Google
00:39:07
photos that came up the other day and it was you and me sitting outside of a hotel we just got dropped off by our
00:39:12
parents to get picked up by other parents and we had like a bass guitar and an amp and another guitar I have no
00:39:17
idea what show or something we just played um but yeah we did some music together some fun times I remember too
00:39:25
do you remember this there is a a Ford dealer in Filmore and Brandon Burns who was going to come on the podcast he got
00:39:33
us a gig and the three of us went and played at this like restaurant that was in the Ford dealership so it was like
00:39:39
weird we were like in the display room and we played music and like nobody came to dinner that night it was just like us
00:39:45
and the restaurant staff was I there you were there I swear you were there I'll
00:39:51
have to confirm with Brandon that you were there but like it was like this little Italian restaurant and
00:39:58
anyway I we just did weird stuff like that you know so much weird stuff and yeah all the dances everything
00:40:06
the plays dances plays yeah there were so many things that looking back I'm like I cringe at some things right like
00:40:15
putting on panty house to be in a Mitchell backyard theater production and and a powdered wig and stuff like that
00:40:22
um but at the same time like there are so many little memories that are so they're fun right it's just we had fun
00:40:29
growing up and you know especially by the time we were in high school and we got
00:40:34
licenses we just kind of got to do whatever we wanted like I don't know you know I remember it being early in the
00:40:41
morning and being like yeah we're just gonna like we already did school like I
00:40:44
did school last night you know let's go let's go have fun and U yeah yeah it's
00:40:51
awesome yeah I wanted to tell one other story about you and see if you remembered this was that uh for your
00:40:58
18th birthday uh a friend of ours Kevin rap put together a surprise party for you
00:41:04
and we you in the morning and there's a picture it looks I'll see if I can find it and I'll
00:41:11
probably post it on the Instagram but it was like it we look like a band like your house was like being redone or
00:41:18
something so there's like plastic wrap everywhere and uh someone shot it from
00:41:22
the balcony so it's like down on all of us and we're all just standing there and
00:41:26
we took you out to breakfast and I don't remember what else we went and did but
00:41:30
still one of my like favorite memories of like the boys going out and having fun and hanging out for for a birthday
00:41:37
so anyway that was awesome yeah do you remember the what the waitress said to us I do remember she asked us if we were
00:41:45
G to go buy you like smokes and porn and scratchers and we were like what the heck are you talking about because we
00:41:51
were good Christian boys y just the amount of awkward silence at that table was so tangible when she asked that
00:41:58
question was so awesome like I remember that I'll remember that forever I just
00:42:03
like she's trying to be funny like talking to like a table of boys ask them if they're gonna buy some porn or
00:42:08
whatever and we're all just like no yeah yeah you spoke the you spoke the devil's words
00:42:15
like so funny yeah also who's buying porn yeah exactly it's free on the internet come on
00:42:24
uh I only got couple more questions for you um I know we're running a little bit
00:42:29
over time but um the uh I was going to ask you so you know based on your experience being a homeschool kid
00:42:37
growing up with it you know would you if you have kids someday would you think about homeschooling your kids would you
00:42:43
send them to private school public school I really don't know I think that would be something I'd have to consider
00:42:48
deeper as I got to it I think the idea of should anybody homeschool their kids um more from like a philosophical
00:42:56
standpoint is much more interesting I trust myself and so if I was to homeschool my kids I would hope I would
00:43:04
do a good job um but I'm also like I just love learning on my own and so I would love to teach my kids but we all
00:43:12
know like we've all met certain types of people in the world God bless them and
00:43:18
they just maybe shouldn't be teaching their kids very much because maybe they
00:43:21
didn't learn very much in school you know what I mean or something like that
00:43:23
like I I saw an an Instagram re the other day and it was this lady and she homeschools her kids and her method of
00:43:33
homeschooling her kid I think is five or six her method of homeschooling is to not teach them and whenever they ask a
00:43:42
question about something that's like the learning experience for the day and so
00:43:45
they're not learning any organized school I think one kid's seven and one's
00:43:50
uh five and so like they just don't know anything about anything they don't know
00:43:54
how to read they don't know how to do math like the seveny old's like just now
00:43:58
like learning how to add and subtract and I'm like so that person's ruining
00:44:02
their kids like that's just what they're doing right and how many people are
00:44:07
going to do that in the world more than than need to probably but at the same time at the same time we
00:44:16
live in such an age that if you wanted to homeschool your kids you could do a fantastic job like it would be hard to
00:44:22
argue it would be really hard to argue that you couldn't do a better job than
00:44:26
School the school systems that are available even private school systems 100% like an intelligent person could do
00:44:32
a much better job anybody who's working one-on-one with a child like for half of
00:44:38
a day can do a better job than a kid going to school like it just sucks to go to school for seven hours and come home
00:44:44
and have three hours of homework and that's just your entire day when you could have had one-on-one time with
00:44:48
someone all day long and done all of your school in three hours and learned way more and especially when it's
00:44:54
tailored to your own like learning style so it's inarguable that it's not better
00:44:59
like it is better but do we trust human beings to teach each other legally yes um do I trust myself I think I do but I
00:45:08
I'd probably ruin my kids in some way as well but I mean so are other teachers
00:45:12
too so I don't know it's a it's a question I'd have to ask myself once I
00:45:15
actually had a kid and and wanted to teach them I would right now say if you made me choose like am I going to
00:45:23
homeschool my future kids I would say I would do some kind of charter school where they go to school a couple days a
00:45:29
week so they can at least not be a super Weirdo And but I can also teach them at
00:45:34
the same time I'd probably choose some kind of hybrid like that at the moment
00:45:38
yeah yeah you also answered my next question which was like what encouragement would you give parents if
00:45:44
they are thinking about homeschooling and I mean you kind of answered it it's
00:45:47
like if you're going to do it like the the resources to do it really well are
00:45:52
just there um but you know so much more than when our parents were doing it% yeah like I remember our moms
00:46:01
meeting up for like Park days and stuff and being like I found this curriculum it's so good like try it out and then
00:46:06
hand each other like the papers and you're like now you just download it on the Internet or like watch a YouTube
00:46:11
video you know find the series on a website or something that you got to pay a little bit of money for but you can
00:46:16
find super like well accredited stuff you could even teach your kid college level stuff like there are so many
00:46:22
different universities that give away classes for free and so much so much of the first few years of of college is
00:46:28
just the same thing you did in high school anyway and so it would be so easy to find the resources you need so if you
00:46:36
wanted to homeschool your kid so easy so easy nowadays if you're if you're
00:46:40
actually motivated and interested in giving your kid a good education you could do a really good job the friend
00:46:45
side of it the social awareness aspect of it uh that would be a harder thing to deal with than the education side when I
00:46:51
think it used to be the other way around it's hard because Co threw everything
00:46:54
into a loop of like the isolation and people separated themselves a lot however there are still really strong
00:47:01
homeschool communities that exist all over the country all over the world and I know where we grew up there was acheve
00:47:08
was the one it was the it was the one that we were all a part of and it was they were super strong and they they did
00:47:13
do events and things that pushed kids to be in community with each other we still
00:47:19
were socially awkward you know caterpillars waiting to be hatched but we at least had some human interaction
00:47:26
um out side of you know when you do meet a kid that has never had social interaction outside of Mom Dad siblings
00:47:32
it's you know you can tell you can tell so that's the other thing is like one if
00:47:37
you're thinking about homeschooling you're a kid the education to to give
00:47:41
them like you said the best education possible it's at your fingertips but two
00:47:45
find that Community to give your kids the opportunity to go out into the world and be socially adjusted know how to
00:47:52
interact with people know how to interact with uh you know in any s circumstance in life right uh you have
00:47:59
the ability to do that so that be all that being said thank you for coming on the show um I appreciate it catching up
00:48:07
with you and is there anything else you want to leave the people with uh anything you want to shout out you know
00:48:14
let the people know yeah um man homeschooling it was a trip I people ask me sometimes you know would you do it
00:48:24
all again if you had the choice like to have your parents School you or not homeschool you and I I struggle with
00:48:29
that question all the time I think I would have thrived a lot more and had uh some
00:48:37
less anxiety socially if I went to a normal public school but at the same time I would have probably had so many
00:48:44
other problems that I would have had to deal with and so it's kind of just like
00:48:48
a you know tit fortat kind of thing I don't think I would change anything I mean I am who I am and I have strength
00:48:55
and weaknesses based off of how I was raised as does everybody and I like who I am and I'm satisfied with the gifts
00:49:03
that I've been given and how I was raised so I don't think I would change
00:49:06
anything it would be interesting like there'd be I'd for sure play a lot more
00:49:10
Sports I would have for sure done different things socially and all that kind of stuff but I liked my um my
00:49:16
childhood I liked meeting you and being friends and all the other friends that I
00:49:20
had um so I think I would keep it the same if you gave me a genie and said you get to choose it would be nice to
00:49:26
experience just so I could kind of you know compare and contrast and tell people what to do um but hey this is the
00:49:32
life that we have and it's uh been a good one so far with its uh cons and its
00:49:37
pros and we're just trying to make the best of it yeah well again thanks for
00:49:41
coming on the show for anyone listening you know this is episode two three I don't know I don't know when this is
00:49:48
coming out yet it's coming out next month uh July sometime but uh you know like subscribe rate review all the good
00:49:56
things you already know what to do and um yeah if there's anything you want to
00:50:00
know about homeschooling send me a comment send me a DM whatever you got to do um because I
00:50:06
want to get it answered for you so this has been the ex- homeschoolers club and until next time we'll see you
00:50:14
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