thoughts on american, european, and home school

so recently i've been getting a rather frustrating amount of college-related emails. while it's nice to know that they're interested in me (nothing like being wanted) it's a bit overwhelming to realize that i will have to be going home and making school-related decisions AGAIN in about 6 months.

::sigh::

with that in mind, i thought i'd give you a quick glimpse into the three types of school systems i've now gotten the change to see... homeschool, american public school, and swiss school. 

WARNING. THIS IS A LONG AND NERDY POST. (punctuated by random pictures of a french castle. you know, just for variation.)

a lot of you reading my blog know this already, but i've been homeschooled for most of my life. contrary to popular belief, this does not mean that i have no social life or that i am only at home with my parents and siblings all day. in general, i take multiple different classes (spanish, art, literature, writing, debate, science, etc.) outside of the house... there are two or three hours of teaching or lectures weekly and then a lot of homework that's assigned over the rest of the week. so yes, i'm homeschooled, but yes, i have friends. :)

the benefits of homeschooling for me were multiple. 

firstly, i've gotten to "squish" my education around in a way that other kids normally don't-- freshman year of high school i wrote, printed, and sold an advice book, sophomore year i participated in debate club and applied to rotary exchange, and this year i'm spending in switzerland. all in all, not a bad combination.

more importantly, i've become fairly independent. while i may not be an adult yet, i'm pretty self-motivated when it comes to schoolwork and projects and learning things, plus i've learned to be annoyingly persistent. this means that school in general isn't a huge struggle for me... i know what to expect from myself and how hard i need to work in order to get results.

that said, i do wish i'd been more prepared for the world around me. my parents have always encouraged me to ask questions, but unfortunately i can't say that for the homeschooling sphere in general. we might not like to admit it, but homeschoolers (and the conservative church, which is pretty related where i'm from) can be judgmental, closed-minded, and shockingly unwilling to challenge their own beliefs. this was really frustrating for me at the beginning of my year.

most of the kids from the usa that are here were enrolled in american high school. contrary to homeschooler belief, this is not the root of all evils. i promise. 

in my opinion, there are benefits (schedule and structure, more people, school clubs and teams and extracurriculars) that i definitely missed out on. as a homeschooler, i think i've been sheltered to a lot of the world, and so my first few months here were partly spent being surprised haha.

at the same time, there are other factors that i gladly skipped. peer pressure, a bazillion people per classroom, drama, etc., etc., etc. i'm not going to pass judgement on something i don't have personal experience with, but i know people who've gone and stated they were unhappy with the American high school system in general.

swiss high school, at first glance, seems like the solution to everything. when i first got here, i was amazed at the differences... at 16, you have the option of either working as an apprentice or continuing with school. every kid has to make a certain grade point average to stay in the class, and so consequently everyone who's there actually wants to be there. kids study and worry about grades and pay attention in class, simply because that is the way the system works. if you don't want to go, you drop out and start working. it's simple as that, and the benefits are obvious.

what i didn't realize then was that sometimes, school causes problems. there are some kids in my class who are naturally smart and almost never show up in class, and then magically have good grades. there are others who have to work extremely hard and yet still have bad grades. and that isn't fair, that isn't right, and it makes me upset. yet it's the only thing that my classmates have known.

what do you think?

days > 170 -- stalling

piece of advice for exchange students #21:

work with what you've got. ;)

the change of families and villages has practically given me a different life now... i spend my time way differently. one rule that my mum has is that i can't travel outside of the Basel region during the week. Which, considering that i'm used to traveling as much as possible, was (and is) a bit of a struggle for me.

but at the same time, there are multiple things i've learned:

a) if you aren't picky, there's a surprisingly large amount of things you can do to keep yourself occupied in one city.

b) also, sometimes friends are wonderful and upon hearing that you can't go visit them, they will come and visit you. it's a nice feeling to have someone take an hour-long train ride just to come hang out.

c) when your travel days are limited to weekends (and only one day per weekend) and you plan extremely carefully, there's a surprising amount of things that fit into one day.

d) make the most of your days.

because really, they all count. and who knows what the next city or family or life change will look like

things i've done in the past 10ish days:

• basel has all these little skits/shows/performances that go before their carnival (fasnacht... look it up!) it was surprisingly fun and i was thrilled to find that i understood a lot of it... especially considering that it was all in the strongest baseldeutsch i've ever heard. ever.
• i went to a snow white ballet. that was lovely.
• also thank goodness that ballets don't have words because i think i would have trouble understanding a baseldeutsch ballet
• i went and saw the international balloon festival in the french part of switzerland! it was gorgeous and we ended up accidentally meeting about 30 different exchange students i'd never seen before. that was fun.
• I saw Frozen with my (old host family) little sister, and I also got to see my old host family again. i miss them a lot, more than i'd thought i would. it was nice!
• Frozen is, by the way, pretty awesome.
• also the newbies came.
• ahhh newbies i'm so excited :)

that's all for now... i did some other things last week, but they'll come in the next update because technically i did them in the 170+ days of my exchange :P

lg

hannah

days > 160 -- continuing

piece of advice for future exchange students #20:

sometimes your life will change.

a lot.

deal with it.

as you read in the last update, I recently changed host families. for various different reasons, it hasn't been a very easy switch... add that to the fact that school started two days after i moved and the fact that semester is ending AND the fact that i need to pay for trips and book my flight back and coordinate with my other host families, and you get one extremely stressed-out Hannah.

so the past couple days have been a lot of "Hannah pull yourself together and get on with your life" and part of that includes getting on with my overdue blogging. 

::sigh::

here goes...

things i've done in the past 10ish days:

• finished my first two weeks with my new host family!
• successfully lived vegetarian
• (okay, i guess i should explain that last part.) for those of you who know me, you probably know that i like eating meat. and that i am not really a vegetarian type of person. BUT my new host mom is vegetarian and so I haven't eaten chicken or steak or ribs or any sort of meat besides lunch meat in the past one and a half weeks. yes, i know that's not super long. but it surprised me (in a good way).
• celebrated one of my friend's (Faith's) birthdays. All of us went to her house and had a sleepover. It was fun.
• said goodbye to the oldies. i miss them already. :(
• didn't do any traveling for a first time in a while... this was really really weird for me, actually. Normally I spend at least one day a week traveling through Switzerland, but my new host mom isn't super happy about that so I guess I'll be keeping my travel to a minimum here. :/
• met up with some exchange students and explored Basel. so that was fun.
• went to a Rotary meeting and met some more people. Every time I go, everyone continues to praise my German and say I'm so talented... while this might not exactly be true, it's nice for my self esteem haha.
• got our newbies!! ahhhh! we are now all oldie exchangers. 
• watched Frozen with my little sister (from my first family).
• actually, that was probably the best part of my entire 10 days.
• also, i hung out with my old family. who i miss. a lot. <3

byeeeeee!

hannah

days > 150 -- understanding

piece of advice for future exchange students #19:

open your eyes to the world around you,

the culture around you,

the people around you.

so lately i've been realizing just how much my worldview has expanded in the past 5 months.

you see, when i left i thought i had a pretty good window on the world. i challenged my own beliefs and i asked questions and i pushed myself to find out more. but what i didn't quite realize was just HOW small my world really was. 

being on my own here has caused me to rethink the things that i was taught about groups of people, and to realize that stereotypes do have a beginning, and lots of people fit them -- but stereotypes are not the same as labels. stereotypes are only supposed to be a base, a sort of "general idea" of what a person is like. but labels are like sorting individuals into a box and only picking the boxes you like.

the thing is,

people aren't boxes.

things i've done in the past 10ish days:

• moved host families! now I live in Bottmingen.
• i also managed to pack my entire life into several suitcases and fit them all into the back of my host family's car. i am very proud of myself, considering that i've accumulated an astonishing amount of stuff in the past 5 months. i am trying not to think about packing to go home...
• i miss my old family.
• the outbound candidates from my sponsoring district (5100) had their first orientation! while this doesn't count as "things i've done" exaactlyyy, i have to say that this brought back memories galore. i can't believe that only a year ago, my country choices were undecided and i didn't even know if i would get to go on exchange. how crazy is life?
• started school. yay?
• celebrated new year's in Europapark with my first host family!! it was wonderful.
• also I discovered that my tolerance for highspeed, highscarelevel rides is a lot better than I expected. Which means that my next destination when I get home is Disneyland. anyone want to come? ;)

tschüssli,

hannah