"My mother was the teacher and my father was the principal.
My report card was what Mom told Dad over the dinner table, and if the principal felt like it he could ground me from doing PE, which might be going skiing the following day."

Ah, high school! My experience with those four years was a little different from that of most people’s. There were no bells or stomping feet. There weren’t even any sweaty, hard breathing classmates. There was no cafeteria food or hall monitor or locker or a set time for when I must finish my work. I was homeschooled. Very simple.

The differences from "ordinary high school" (public education) were quite natural to me. I was homeschooled since the first grade (I never went to kindergarten). Therefore, when graduation from junior high turned out to be a little celebration which lasted three minutes while I opened my gift, it was very natural to me. I was a freshman and now I could look forward to more challenges in the next school year, "hooray!"

As I plowed through each grade, the only person I had to compete with was myself. My friends, like myself, were mostly homeschooled. Although a large number of them were in my grade, none of them were at the same point in their education. An example of this was my required reading. For me, required reading only meant that I had to read something that was at a high school or adult level. I was allowed to choose the material as long as it fell into those categories. Thus, I may have read some books that friends of mine never even touched. We were all plowing the field of knowledge at different speeds, at our own comfortable paces. My friend Josh might have been working at algebra while I struggled through geometry. We were both in the same grade, but we were not at the same place in our education. This is very common among home educators.

"So", you may think, "homeschoolers do have friends. But do they ever get enough socialization?"
I and hundreds of others will tell you, friend, that socialization never lacked in our lives. We were also taught to respect people of all ages, from our younger siblings and their little friends, to our elderly neighbors whose parties and other gatherings we commonly attended. As far as socialization with our peers was concerned, we had so many activities provided by and for the home-schoolers, that we had to limit ourselves so as to be able to fit school time into the schedule. Perhaps you are wondering, "What do these people do for fun? How do you entertain kids of all ages and get them to enjoy being together?" That was easy! We roller skated and ice skated and skied and snowboarded and had parties and did the same things that other people our ages enjoy doing. Almost all of these activities were during the week while thousands of unfortunate kids in public schools were staring through their blackboards. We also had a high school banquet (similar to the proms held by public schools) and a large graduation ceremony.

It is true that not all home-schoolers enjoy as many activities as I did. There are even some who hate being homeschooled, who may feel lonely and bored. But are all the kids in public school happy? Is there no one who feels this same way as they see people all around whom they hardly know? Do they go home to a dark, smoky house and bury their misery in marijuana and alcohol?

Yes, my years in high school were different from those of the public schools. My mother was the teacher and my father was the principal. My report card was what Mom told Dad over the dinner table, and if the principal felt like it, he could ground me from doing PE, which might be going skiing the following day. We made just about  everything we did into an educational experience. Going to Yosemite was part of geography, science, and PE while listening to Rush Limbaugh on the radio or asking Dad about politics was considered government, economics, and maybe even history. One of the advantages that I "suffered" from was the one-on-one learning that I received from my mom. She only had five students in her entire school, thus it was easy for her to help me along. Compare that to a teacher with a class of twenty or even thirty students. Mom also knew what my homework was and if I had done it before I went hiking with my friends.

High school was never over (not even in the summer or on other vacations) until I graduated with about twenty other students from the homeschool group I was involved in. We walked down the aisle with grins on our faces and cheers in the air and stepped into our futures.