Not all experiences in home schooling are created equally

I did not fully appreciate my home-school experience until I had spoken to Lillian Pierce '02 about hers. I certainly enjoyed home schooling, and I had a vague sense that I was getting away with something.

But now, I know I got away with something.

Lillian stayed home so she could do more work than is possible at a normal school. She got up at 5 a.m. to practice violin before beginning her school day at 7. She spent her free time practicing her music and reading.

I, on the other hand, considered home schooling a way to finish my work as quickly as possible so that I could do fun things, like eat.

I ate a tremendous amount of food. I usually woke up around 8 a.m., stumbled into the kitchen and pulled out the Bisquick. I started working around 9, unless I had a tennis match, in which case I started around noon.

Regardless, because of the efficiency of home schooling, I always had time to watch "Days of Our Lives" and eat corn nuts.

Lillian and I are not entirely dissimilar, though. We both attended traditional schools, though I spent more time there than she did. And we both left for the same reasons: dissatisfaction with apathetic teachers and with curricula tailored for underachievers.

We both appreciated the freedom to take intellectual side roads and the challenge of learning without a teacher. We both have anecdotes of unstructured school days: She read a British novel every 24 hours; I read "Animal Farm" and all the John Grisham books. She replicated Redi's experiment on spontaneous generation; I tried to replicate Newton's experiments with optics. It didn't work though, and I eventually just used his formulas to create "virtual" results.

She wrote a companion poem to "My Last Duchess;" I wrote messages when people called for my mother. She derived pi with a piece of string; I used the pi button on my calculator.

We both have unpleasant memories. She did not enjoy learning grammar; I despised my unflappable typing instructor, Mavis Beacon. Mavis always spoke with an infuriating cheeriness, even when I tried to spite her by holding down the space bar. "Your score was zero percent. Good job, Charlie Wells!"

I probably would have hated grammar too, but I skipped it and consequently cannot tell a verb from a noun.

Lillian and I both found foreign languages uniquely challenging. We both eventually ran out of things to do at home and attended college for a year before coming here.

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Here, we have been happy to meet students who don't tell us to "stop talkin' funny" when we conjugate verbs correctly. We find our preparation is sufficient. Neither of us has had too much trouble adapting to Princeton though we notice a vague sense of guilt when, instead of struggling with a difficult problem, we just ask the professor for the answer. And he tells us! It's almost like cheating.

We enjoyed home schooling, but neither of us considers it a universal solution. It demands a bit of ambition and confidence — and in my case, arrogance. And though we picture ourselves as models of normality, some people tell us that they wouldn't want to stay home and read books all day.

But home schooling has its rewards. After all, who doesn't envy our resumes? I was prom king and queen, and Lillian won all of the senior superlatives, including "best hair" and "wittiest." And yes, we both gave ourselves As.

Charlie Wells is a sophomore from Macon, Ga.