Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 This is a pretty hastily compiled group of thoughts after my very recent graduation. I may write a more organized version of these ideas in the future.

Is everything suddenly over? I feel kind of crushed and elated at the same time, I’m crammed with emotions. Here are a few:
Relief: I’ve made it!
Sadness: my childhood years are essentially at an end. Things will just be plain different! I’ll catch moments of childhood in the future but soon I’ll be on my own. After what has been a lifetime so far of struggling with the challenges and enjoying the wonders of homeschooling, it’s come to a close. No more counting credits. Well, that’s a nice thing, anyhow! And yet, I’m sure I’ll miss it in an-absence-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder kind of way.  
Excitement:  there are gigantic, almost unimaginable changes coming my way. I don’t know precisely what the future holds and I’m terrified and ecstatic. I’m going away to a university! Routines will be completely reinvented. I'm going to miss being a homeschool student. I'm going to miss it very badly sometimes.
Astonishment: That was it?

Realization: I may have graduated from highschool. But I’ve never, I will never, graduate from homeschooling. Homeschooling is part of who I am, who I will always be. It wasn’t a school I went to that I’ll never see again. It wasn’t the studying I did. It was a life: it will be a life. May God give me the passion and the joy to continue to be a homeschooler at heart.  And I don’t mean to be cliché. But true homeschoolers don’t graduate from life. The diploma, yes, it’s a step into another world, but it isn’t a step out of an old world. It’s just a brand new, exciting and frightening continuation.