After third grade, my mom decided to homeschool me. It wasn’t because she thought I wasn’t getting a good enough education or because she disagreed with what was being taught. None of that was true. Mom pulled me out of public school because she wanted to see me, and she wanted me to have opportunities that I could not have in public school. The three years I spent as a homeschooled child were not “the best years of my life,” as some would expect me to say. I didn’t get to sleep in until noon or stay in my pajamas all day, and I didn’t get to forget about schoolwork and play whenever I wanted to. A lot of days I would have liked to have done those things, but I didn’t have the choice. It was expected that I would do my schoolwork every day, in a timely fashion. I had specific assignments, normally consisting of a section from my math book, a few grammar worksheets, reading historical books, and writing. Along with the academic assignments, I had to do household chores. To my mother’s eternal frustration and dismay, I made a 30-minute chore last forever. I suppose it really shouldn’t take five hours to clean a bathroom. Looking back, I understand why a lot of people thought I was an unusual child. I spent all my free time — and most of the time when I was supposed to be doing math — reading anything I could find. I was a slightly obsessive reader. Mom often had to drag me out of my room and away from my reading about fascinating people and events in history to make me finish the assignment that I had abandoned, usually math. While I was homeschooled, I found some things I really liked to do, including tatting and crocheting. I enjoy them so much that I am currently working with the Linus Project to make blankets. I also became interested in sign language, which I learned from a mom in our homeschool group. That was the beginning of my love of languages in general. When I did manage to finish my assignments on time, I often played outside. No matter where I live, I always find a place where I can make up stories and poems, and think. I was lucky enough as a child to have a large back yard with both forest and open field in which to play, and they became the backdrops for the stories I created. Not being in public school for those three years made my return to school a little difficult socially, but the things I learned during my homeschool years have stuck with me. In my free time I played outside, did needlework or curled up with a good book. These activities gave me a strong imagination, plenty of creative things to do, and a familiarity with human nature and the world that would have been difficult to garner in any other way. That time was an education for me in itself. Besides learning about grammar and fractions, I also learned how to do laundry, which will probably be a very useful skill in college when I come back to my dorm after a fierce game of tug-of-war.