Up until this school year, I’ve been homeschooled my whole life. 

In homeschooling, I was mostly taught  by my mom and the sites she chose for me and my siblings to use. The time we started varied over the years; Sometimes 9 AM, sometimes 8, sometimes 7:45, sometimes somewhere in between those. My interactions with other kids were largely through classes of homeschoolers I was invited to, such as writing or singing ones, or medieval re-enactment events which happened a couple of times per year.

When March 13, 2020 rolled around, my mom brought us all into the homeschool room- the room where we do our work- to tell us about Covid. She said it was looking like this was going to probably last 12-18 months while they developed a vaccine, and told us about how she thought that would probably go; Two months with everyone indoors other than to get necessities, one month out so that they could work and such, repeating until the vaccine was distributed. She planned, regardless of this, to send us to changemakers in the fall.

I don’t really get why she thought that was a good idea, sending us to public school for the first time in our lives during a pandemic that she knew would still be going on at that point, but that’s what happened; Despite the pandemic, she signed us up to go into – thankfully remote – school in the fall.

It’s been a lot; Between assignments that ask people to talk about things that I, as a former homeschooler, don’t have experience with, to getting used to the format, to being overwhelmed when you don’t realize how big an assignment is until the night before it’s due and have to reread an entire book for english class to fill in the character sheets for everyone and manage to turn it in ten minutes before midnight. 

It’s been enjoyable enough, I suppose? I’m not sure if it’s meant to be. I’ve liked the books we’ve been reading in english, enjoy the quizlets and gimkits and blookets in Spanish, I already knew much of what we’ve been learning in math but just the right amount of already knowing some of it that it’s enjoyable to try and do the questions, not just boring. I don’t know what’s going to happen when I go to in-person public school if things are better by fall; I’m bad at talking to people- always too quiet or saying the wrong things, too busy trying to take in everyone else’s social cues and body language to hold a conversation, too nervous to go up to groups of other kids – and having to spend that much time around so many of them isn’t something I’ve ever had to do before. Seems kind of horrible honestly, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do that.

But I thought this would be horrible too, and though it was a bit bumpy getting here certainly, it hasn’t been! So… not looking forward to this, but I’m going to try, I suppose.