let's stumble towards success and pack some snacks for little breaks

(talking about the differences between me and my brothers)
Amanda: It's a question of common sense, whether you can find your way out of a paper bag.
Me: Hey! I can find my way out of a paper bag!
Amanda: Okay, but what do you do when you get out? Clay pops out of the bag and goes, "That way is north!" You pop out and go, "Ooh, butterfly!" Cordell goes, "uh, bag's looking good..."

My big brother Cordell has launched a blog about his adventures as an intern in Japan: Travels of a Yellow Hat. He's pretty funny sometimes, and it's interesting to hear about his experiences, so you guys should check it out. Warning: he is a fan of retina-breaking shades of yellow and orange, and the site design reflects that.

Yesterday, I found myself conducting an impromptu circus school in my dorm room. Being the juggling expert for once was nice. Later, one of the girls I was teaching and my roommate's boyfriend compared running speeds. I'm no running expert, but I know that "7:15 mile, but that's after my ankle injury--I was a lot faster before" and "Five-something, I don't remember exactly" are Impressive.

I just had my first class: Qualitative Methods in Psychology. I like it okay, but I suspect I will end up using chiefly the sort of psychology the teacher explicitly said the class was not about (formal experimentation). Observation and interpretation are all well and good, but I'm uncomfortable with drawing conclusions about populations based on case studies. I mean, I can live without concrete hypotheses in some situations, but I need decent sample sizes if I'm going to be doing any generalization. Still, observation and interviewing skills are important, and in any case, I should learn the basics before I start writing anything off.

Turns out I need to apply for a fifth course even if I'm just auditing it, so I'm going to do that for Quantitative Methods (statistics) and just sit in on the Entrepreneurship class instead of officially auditing it. I checked with the teacher, and he's cool with that.

I just remembered a field trip I took when I was going to the Waldorf school in fifth grade. We went to an Egyptian museum, and I spent most of the time rather bored because we were rushed past the parts I wanted to see (like the copy they had of the Rosetta Stone) and given lectures on the parts I wasn't interested in (like jewelry). At the end of the trip, as we were about to leave, Sean (another student) and I sat down in front of a movie about Queen Hatshepsut. It was a really cool video, and we were both intrigued, but Ms. Warren made us leave after about two minutes.

I don't remember a single thing about any of the stuff they made us see, but I do remember Queen Hatshepsut, and I do remember a lot about the Rosetta Stone. Because I was interested in them, and I wanted to learn about them, and I know I would have learned a hell of a lot MORE about them if I'd been allowed to.

I liked the Waldorf School when I was going there. I pretended I didn't when I talked to Mom, because I knew she didn't want me to like it, but I did. I liked the constant contact with people, the power plays with the teachers (the reason I ended up expelled), the big recess yard with all the vegetation. I liked the drawing class, taught by Miles's grandpa, and I liked being able to whup the other kids' asses at everyday schoolwork. I liked the attention I got when I didn't do what I was supposed to. There wasn't much homework at all, and no grades, only evaluations.

But that year was a complete pause in my actual education. The only thing I learned at the Waldorf school was how to hold my pencil wrong, and I was too tired after school to learn on my own. Mom was working then, so she didn't have much time, either. And during my time at the Waldorf school, I turned into a prep. My best friend was a girl called Monet, who had a gorgeous body and showed it off as much as the dress code allowed. Last I heard (which was the fall of 2002, when we were both twelve), she was smoking, drinking, and running away to Vacaville with her sixteen-year-old boyfriend who thought she was fourteen.

This is not to say I think my education has been perfect in all other ways. I do criticize the way my mom taught me and is teaching Clayton- unschooling, a method with quite a few flaws, in my opinion. Clayton is currently spending most of his time playing video games and reading manga comics. The unschooling argument is that he will motivate himself when he's ready. I motivated myself when I was ready, at age eleven, and now I take college courses and have a plan for my life. I do think my education has gaps because of the way I was brought up, but I'm independent and ambitious enough to deal with them. Cordell, on the other hand, is almost seventeen and doing nothing with his life. I don't think this is completely Mom's fault, nor do I think he would do any better in a public institution, but perhaps he would have done well with a little more guidance and instruction. Homeschooling should definitely be tailor-made for the child. That's the point of it, isn't it?

None of this is meant as jabs toward anyone or their choice of schooling, by the way. I'm just writing down some of the stuff that's clogging up my brain.