darned homeschooling

If we hadn’t homeschooled, he probably wouldn’t have developed his passion for filmmaking. He might have, but probably not to this extent. He wouldn’t have had the time to make all those films with his buddy when he was fourteen and fifteen; he wouldn’t have studied Hitchock’s films for months as a homeschooling project; he wouldn’t have spent so much time at the youth filmmaking program which he’s attended for almost three years now.

If we hadn’t homeschooled, we probably wouldn’t have traveled so much. He might not have figured out at such an early age how much he loves cities. It surprised me how much he loved London at nine, Rome at fourteen. And he was awestruck from the moment we dragged our suitcases out of Penn Station in New York City when he was fifteen.

If we hadn’t homeschooled, he might not have developed the notion that you should love what you’re learning. That covering a bunch of subjects to satisfy other people isn’t how you ought to live your life. And he might not have believed that at seventeen you can know yourself, and know what will make you happy.

This kid knows himself. He knows what will make him happy, and he’s gone out there and made it happen.

This past weekend Chris and I took H to a weekend for admitted students at H’s college of choice.

In New York City. That’s about as far across the country as you can get from where we are in California.

But the weekend was thrilling. And the school seems about the most ideal place for H that I can imagine.

Have you ever been to NYU? It sits smack in the middle of Greenwich Village. It isn’t a typical college campus–there are no boundries, or football stadiums or fraternity houses. Classroom buildings are tucked in between thrift shops and falafel joints and subway stations; you know it’s an NYU building when you see the purple flag waving above the entrance. The Tisch film school is right there on Broadway. The school just radiates out from Washington Square, letting all of New York City become its campus.

We got to wander around the Film and Television building, poking our noses into studios and Foley booths and talking to professors. Unlike at other film schools, H will likely take a single general ed course each semester, and the rest will be all film classes, all the time. After two years of high school, H has had it with general ed. He wants to explore what he wants to explore and he wants to do it now.

And the thought of living in New York City thrills him like you would not believe.

So now I have to prepare myself to ship my first baby across the country in September, to live in big, bad NYC. I’m sure it hasn’t hit me how hard it will be to have him so far away, to see him so rarely. And I would probably be a puddle of tears and panic right now–if I weren’t so dang excited for him.

If we hadn’t homeschooled, he might never have gotten the notion to study filmmaking in New York City. But he did, and in a few months he’ll be leaving. Darned homeschooling. It creates independent kids who know what they want out of life.

Consider yourself warned.