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Homeschool and College.
Jast
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
There's been a few general homeschool threads, but they're months old. I know some people on this forum have been homeschooled and went to college. I was wondering how their experiences were. How did you adjust and stuff like that, was it hard getting into college, etc. I know Appalachian State requires a high school transcript and SAT scores for homeschoolers and that's all while Virginia Tech requires some SAT subject tests.
If any you guys met homeschoolers while in college, post your experiences you had with them. And also, do you think there should be special admission requirements for homeschoolers. This is kind of a broad topic, but I wanted to focus more on homeschoolers and college then just homeschooling in general.
If any you guys met homeschoolers while in college, post your experiences you had with them. And also, do you think there should be special admission requirements for homeschoolers. This is kind of a broad topic, but I wanted to focus more on homeschoolers and college then just homeschooling in general.
Jast on
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But in most cases I think the process of making new friends, encountering a wide spectrum of people and beliefs, and the painful process of being at a new situation with new people is a necessary part of growth.
College was not as hard for me as I though it would be, because in freshman year of high school I went through a similar thing. I knew no one, and had to make tons of friends. It's painful, but worth it.
Back on topic, I know one kid who was home schooled and is socially awkward and ended up commuting to college (not that there's anything wrong with that; it's just that he was intending to live on campus originally). I also know a homeschooler who is perfectly fine and has a great, outgoing personality.
I think it depends on your personality going in, and how much you challenge yourself by having an active, engaging social life. It's very easy to just get stuck in a rut of having your close circle of friends and hanging out with no one else if you're home schooled.
Regarding special academic requirements, I don't think that'd be such a hot idea.
Of course, you could alternatively just focus on your schoolwork and not bother making friends and still turn out alright. I'm not seeing how lack of a social life is being equated to not turning out okay.
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[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Have you given your weighted compainion cube a name?
I did not understand that question at all.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Alright, a couple points here.
1) I was emphasizing a social life and friends and stuff because I consider it quite improbable that one would be able to develop social skills without the give and take of normal everyday interactions and the meeting of new people and the challenges that are associated with that.
2) I also took it as a given that having people skills and getting along well with people was a positive thing. If you disagree with this point I don't think there's much more to be said.
It was a Portal reference.
Well its possible theoretically, though I agree with the general statement that those growing up sheltered from rest of society will probably not be as socially adept as one who grew up differently.
I disagree with the premise that there's an innate positive/negative quality to a the general ability of 'social aptitude' in a vacuum and view it more that, if the person is satisfied with their life and doing well in college (since college is there to prepare you for the workforce later on in life) then if they have no friends, I don't believe it would be a negative thing in their mind as they're not focused on it. If their eventual line of work requires extensive interaction with people? Well then yes, lack of social skills would be a negative but then the person who chose that path in their studies should already be aware of that and working on increasing their social skills. I just differ in the opinion that there's a black and white designation for social skills = good, lack of social skills = bad.
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Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Though, I guess Ted Kaczynski did fine without them...
Interaction on a minimal level are required but then those are developed (unless there are some underlying psychological factors such as sociopathy or autism) through grade school/high school, and some people can choose to survive with as minimal an interaction as possible (although the example I would use is a personal allegory which really isn't externally verifiable so I won't bring it up) with the outside world. I just contest the opinion on social development in college as an integral part of one's development as intrinsically required to succeed later in life; or that applying the label that someone's choice in life that might leave them, socially, a recluse is somehow a lesser path of living is a valid way to go about things and not simply a judgmental world view or indicative of personal superiority/arrogance.
I mean, John Nash seemed to still lead a successful life.
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Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
And yeah, I think there's definitely something to be said for social reclusiveness being inherently inferior; it's not healthy, physically or psychologically.
Homeschooling Has Social Advantage
Bad example with John Nash then, I was trying to draw a comparison with your example of Ted, since they both attended college and were published/excelled academically while being comparatively anti-social or detached from others.
As for the second assertion, that's a personal opinion on your part which is what I'm trying to address, that viewing antisocial behaviour as unhealthy is a subjective view full of inherent bias from one's societal upbringing. If you (people in general dependent on their culture) yourself are not antisocial, you're going to view those that are less social or reclusive as somehow 'unhealthy' and not simply as a different lifestyle choice.
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[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
No, it's not. Get some damn friends.
I think that the reason I got in was a good SAT score as well as the community college courses I took.
Make with the logic people. Saying something doesn't do anything bad is not the same as saying it does something good. Fat has quantifiable negative effects on one's bodily health. We define this as bad, because it can lead to unpleasant experiences. If you do not define those as "bad", then there is nothing wrong with being fat. Likewise, your argument would better served by listing reasons why being anti-social might be considered "bad".
Anyway, my take on the issue is it's not a problem. It will help if you engage, and it will be a pretty intense experience, but I've found that high school is a much more critical point than college for social skills. In college everyone's more adult and just doing their own thing. (Case in point, you get people that love the sound of their own voice and are always trying to impress the professor, people whom I seriously wonder how they ever made it through grade school without getting beat up, and other students just let them live in their little vacuum.) Also, you could become fatigued pretty quickly with the workload in the first semester or two and have a hard time engaging and making friends, which, well that's normal and I'm not going to get preachy about making friends in that situation.
I think my point is, you will have to put in some effort to get the same social growth experience out of college as you might get in grade school if your home school career was fairly insular, because if you put yourself in a vacuum, people will let you stay there. Whereas high school is much more like being crammed into a tiny pot with a bunch of other morons, and it forces you to get used to things like having opinions and dealing people. Courses won't be a problem though, if you've done a half-decent job of your homeschooling.
Academically, I seem to be doing all right. But then again, I'm still taking intro courses at a state school in the middle of Bumfuck, Kansas. So who knows?
The ACT is for the midwest and the SAT is more for the coasts in general. There is a way to get some parity between the scores, but it isn't all that great. IIRC you tend to get pushed into taking the test that the school wants, but who knows anymore.
It wasn't in college, but a good friend of mine in High School was home schooled K-8. I figure that it was a large factor in his being really good at playing a rather large variety of musical instruments meanwhile I wasn't all that great after hot cross buns. He was as sociable as most everyone else and did fine in most all his classes ...I really should give him a call, it's a shame that we fell out of touch in college. Thanks, forum thread.
I guess it's like the effect of violent video games on people; the effect it has on people depends on the environment they grew up in. I didn't socialize in person, but I've been on BBSes and message boards with social people for as long as I can recall. I guess I found it easy to transfer the skills from the intertrons to in-person interaction. :P
And everybody knows that public schools would certainly never produce a kid who was socially awkward or a towering asshole.
I suspect confirmation bias plays a non-trivial part in people's perceptions on this.
Home schoolers are schooled at home: yes or no?
Home schoolers do not attend a high school environment wherein they are exposed to hundreds of people on a day to day basis, forcing social interactions: yes or no?
Home schoolers thus do not have the built-in opportunities for interaction that people who attend high school have: yes or no?
Given these things, I do not think it is unreasonable to assume that since having the child experience lots of social interaction is harder, more children who are home schooled have the probability of lacking social experience.
Not to mention the fact that if you don't go to a high school you are automatically an "outsider" in those kids who DID go to high school's eyes, purely because you don't see them on a day to day basis. This makes it even harder to socialize with those groups.
I fail to see where the gap in the logic lies. It's a pure matter of probability: the home school environment is one in which social interaction with large groups of kids does not come as naturally. More effort must be made on the part of both the kid and the parents, and it is thus easier for that effort not to be made satisfactorily.
I think Shinto was likely referring to people who have a blind bias, not people who objectively look at a homeschooler, rather than concluding outright that they're socially inept because they were homeschooled.
You've got some serious fallacies in the assumptions on which you base your logic. Home school kids don't spend all their time at home, nor all of their learing time. You're also assuming forced interactions (especially forced high school interactions) always lead to positive social development.
Being inept with women is pretty much the norm for men.
Once a guy gets married, many happily regress to the 13 year oldish "girls are yucky" mentality (except for your wife of course) and no longer care what other women think outside of normal, polite interaction. I.E. I'm married, I don't have to impress you.
Marriage has been ironically...liberating in that reguard.
Annoying how? Annoying as in the level of conversation seems too lowbrow or too immature?
Margaret Thatcher
And to be fair, i have met some pretty wierd home schooled people, however, had they been to school, they would have been just as wierd.... it is just the parents.
Agreed. I heartily disagree with the assumption that school leads to positive social development.
Throwing that many kids together is actually a pretty artificial thing to do, and kids deal with it in completely different ways.
I can agree with this, at least partially. I don't mind the "play-by-plays" usually, but I recognize that there is a certain subset of people who can make those somewhat irritating. But the college social scene places tons of value in pointless things, and worships meaningless eccentricity. Even my best friend has caught the disease, to my dismay. No, do not think that so and so is intrinsically "awesome" thankyouverymuch.
That said, it might have been an easier transition from a regular high school experience, and I don't know that I would want to homeschool my future kids. Even so, I know some people in my year who attended large public high schools and have turned out with more of the awkward traits people seem to associate with homeschooled kids even this far in, so I guess your mileage may vary.
What!? What does this even mean?
People are different, and assumptions should be avoided.
Strictly speaking, it is pretty artificial. I doubt that there was another time in history where thousands of children were crammed in to one structure. :P