Is homeschooling a form of legalism? How about counter-cultural practices like courtship (i) and big families, which are common in homeschooling circles? Questions like these have caused me no small degree of confusion. I turn to my own family and many families that I have known, and confidently answer, "no." But then I find blog articles, comments of friends, and even reports on television which seem to credibly contradict my personal experiences. However, as I have repeatedly encountered these contradictions, I have also come across a probable explanation.

...you consider being called 'weird', 'crazy', or anything related to those words a compliment

...you play games with the minds of people who don't know that you're a homeschooler. Like telling them that you're class valedictorian, and later in the conversation telling them you're class dunce

...you have trouble keeping quiet when someone makes a mistake in grammar or uses a word incorrectly

...you wonder how other kids ever survived public school

...you can sense when somebody's going to ask if you stay in your pajamas all day (and the answer is NO)

 This evening, while reading an article about a particular museum, I noticed a sentence mentioning field trip packages available for different groups, among which it listed “homeschool families, and parents whose children are in public school”. 

I was stunned.

While I have read similar references countless times, I had never caught the significance before.  Look at the wording:  “Homeschool families.”  “Parents whose children are in public school.”

When I sat down to write this essay, I wasn’t really sure what to say. “By the time they finish reading this essay, the reader should feel like he knows you—“ that’s what the articles about writing college essays say.

I arrived at 7:45, as the sheet said. There were already about thirty people clustered around a bulletin board to see which testing room they would be in. My mom and I found my name, on the Auditorium list. So, we said goodbye and I walked toward the auditorium, hoping it wouldn’t be far so that I would get lost. The man at the door checked my passport and admission ticket, and then I went in and sat down. I pulled my pencils, calculator, and eraser out of my bag and organized them on the desk. It was getting close to 8 AM, and more people were sitting down.