By Sarabeth Matilsky

By Sarabeth Matilsky

ADVENTURES OF VERONICA, A COLLEGE-AGED HOMESCHOOLER
(Mostly Compiled From Actual Events)
By Emily Houk, Selina Hunt, and Sarabeth Matilsky

Cast of characters:
-Veronica, a homeschooled teenager
-A Concerned Mail Carrier
-Veronica’s Concerned Grandmother
-Two of Veronica’s Concerned Peers
-Two Concerned Strangers
-Two Concerned Friends-of-the-Family

SKIT ONE

Mail Carrier: So, here’s your mail.

Veronica: Thanks.

M: You know, I’ve noticed that you haven’t been getting any college applications…

(Originally published, I _think_, in "Growing Without Schooling" magazine.)

by Sarabeth Matilsky

(Originally published in "Adventures and Challenges: Real Life Stories by Girls and Young Women," edited by Frances A. Karnes and Suzanne M. Bean)

By Sarabeth Matilsky

I was in the Seattle Airport anticipating my red-eye flight home to the East Coast with very little joy. I was returning to NJ from a camp for homeschooled teenagers, and it had been an incredible week. What a bummer to end all that with a trip on something as sterile as an airplane.

I

January 20, 1998

There are a lot of headaches that one must deal with to be an unschooler. For eighteen years, my parents or myself have had to answer continual questions on everything from my social development to my ability to get a Real Job. And yet, despite all the challenges I wouldn’t trade these eighteen years for anything in the world. Today was one of those days that reminded me of that...

I currently can't find a copy of this essay, which was originally published in "blue jean: what young women are thinking, saying, and doing," edited by Sherry S. Handel. Let me know if you find it somewhere!

(Originally published in the George Street Co-op's newsletter, "Food for Thought," in 1996(?)

by Sarabeth Matilsky

I never sit in a school classroom. I’m a homeschooler, and the idea of a classroom with other students around me in orderly rows and a teacher in front is alien to me. Does this mean I have no teachers, that I don’t learn from anyone? Does it indicate that I am deprived of an intellectual community?

(Originally published in "New Moon Network" magazine, May/June(??) 1997)

by Sarabeth Matilsky

On 12 November 1995, I turned sixteen and crossed that invisible threshold separating childhood from the rest of my life. On that crisp November evening I passed into a new period of my life surrounded by my family and twenty-four close friends.