The Pros and Cons of Sophomore Year Online

A learning experience like no other, sophomore year has had its ups, downs, bad days, better ones, and a fair amount of failures, matched by a good amount of successes. However, trial and error has taught me a lot. For I have gained much more from school this year than I ever initially thought possible.

 

Pro #1: I man up and take some responsibility

Have I learned more about biology and calculus while traveling around the world than I would have in a school building with a teacher standing in front of the classroom drilling me for six hours a day? No, probably not. However, my hard work has generated a whole different type of knowledge. The lack of deadlines, onslaught of classes, and knowing that it all lay in my haphazard hands stressed me out. I felt as though I was flat out not in good hands. I know my reputation better than anyone.  Although I may go into something with high hopes and good intentions, more often than not, inherent procrastination knocks on my door for a reality check, takes its toll, and all of a sudden, a month later, I finally turn the assignment in, 29 days later than expected.

Be that as it may, that was the old me. The new Wescott has learned the importance of time management, deadlines, and schedules. Boring, right? It may sound boring, but without these newfound skills I wouldn’t become a Junior next year. Instead, I would be retaking biology and math while regretting every second I didn’t make a schedule or commit to a deadline.

 

Con #1: I have to man up and take some responsibility

Another lesson learned from this enriching school year online is that responsibilities take up a whole lot of time! Almost everyday, I have to actually plan out when I am going to make a schedule for tomorrow and how long it will take. A question I often struggle with nowadays is, “Where do I draw the line?” “When does a good thing shift into too much of a good thing?” “How many wheat grass shots do I ingest to reach the optimal level of health, without drinking so many that I start spastically puking my guts out?” Through extensive research on the subject of good-schedules versus over-scheduled-schedules, my current answer to this question is, “When I know exactly, down to every single minute, what I am going to do tomorrow, I have taken it too far.” I have been in this position for weeks on end at times: over planned, lackluster, uninspired, and usually unproductive. I try to find balance by only planning the things that absolutely need to be planned and leaving the rest to chance.

 

Pro #2: free time

A bonus to taking classes with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln High School, fresh out of the Mercer Island School District, is that you will instantly see a dramatic difference in the free time department. To be frank: Mercer Island School District requires much more of your time. I can’t even begin to count the hours I dedicated to High School last year as a Freshman at Mercer Island. The free time available once you cut out all of those tedious hours hunched over a desk doing some busy work, like extremely precise formatting, empowers the exploration of what you personally want to do. I, for example, am now able to study computer science and logo creation with lynda.com, cook a new recipe everyday, and exercise much more often.

 

Con #2: it gets lonely

With online high school you find yourself a little lonely at times. There isn’t a physical teacher to answer any random questions that pop into your head.  There aren’t any smart kids to collaborate with and form study groups in preparation for upcoming tests.  And, most importantly, there isn’t a hilarious friend to distract you all class long from learning. There is a tight-knit community in high school. It’s like any job I suppose, the people whom you work with can motivate you to return day after day. You may have to endure a long, hairsplitting lecture or two, but all of those classes are worth it to be able to hang out with your friends during lunch time.

I really miss the simplicity of raising my hand, asking a question, and getting an answer as well. When your high school is online and your teacher is on the opposite side of the planet, things get slightly more complicated. You have to email the school with a question and wait nine hours for it to be the morning because the time zones are different.  Then they have to forward your question to your teacher, who has to respond, send it back to the school, wait some more, then send it back to me.  Finally, after all the back and forth, I learn what the teacher meant by, “How many harms are there in data table number five?” Harms was a typo, she meant to say “herons.” This whole process takes between four to six days and is very labor intensive. It’s the little things I took for granted.

 

Pro #3: learning World History, among other classes, while traveling the world

Oddly enough, our trip itinerary actually corresponded pretty closely with my World History course syllabus. We started out in Italy and during that time, I was reading all about The Renaissance, The Statue of David, and Leonardo DeVinci in my World History textbook. Not long after, I found myself answering questions on my World History tests about ancient paintings from the prolific Minoan civilization that resided in Greece. After taking the test for a while, I realized that I had already answered half of my test, not based on what I read on a textbook, but by reflecting back on the previous Tuesday.  We drove twenty minutes from where we were living, over to the famous Minoan port, Phaestos, and gazed upon excavated and preserved Minoan paintings of bulls, gods, and athletes competing in sports. My stories go on and on: learning about the Swahili kingdom in Tanzania, the Vietnam War in Hanoi, and ancient Chinese history while hiking the Great Wall. Without the invention of online high school, none of this would have been possible. I would have had to choose between passing sophomore year OR going on a trip around the world. It was awesome when I discovered that I had the option of sophomore year WHILE on a trip around the world.

This year has renewed a lot of mysticism around school that has slowly depleted throughout my school career. The first day of school, real school (I’m talking Kindergarten here,) was magical. It was new, weird, and oddly fun because I was learning and that was interesting. Over the years, I lost the excitement about learning, the lust to know more about something. Why? Did the subjects get more boring? Did the material get too confusing? Where did I lose my six year-old sense of bewilderment? I believe it all got too familiar–too routine and mundane. I believe that I got tired of the same schedules, the same desks, the same classrooms, the same everything.  Self-induced fascination eventually waned to obligatory reluctance and what used to be fun in Kindergarten was now a job. I needed to shake things up. I needed to take a trip around the world and take classes online. I loved it, but it was more of rehabilitation than a way of life that I would want to continue indefinitely.

I am done rehabilitating and ready for normal life. I am once again excited for the first day of school.

[University of Nebraska profiled Wescott on their website….you can read the article here if you want]