A Day at My School

by Erin Pryor

If the following description doesn't sound tike a typical home-school day to you, I don't blame you. My name is Erin Pryor, and I'm a fourteen-year-old girl completing the tenth grade at home. "So what's this dashing-out-the -door-in-the-morning business?" you ask. Well, since doing high school science labs at home is difficult, I go to the local community college on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to take Chemistry 102. I have a three-hour lab on Fridays after class, but on Mondays and Wednesdays I take Guitar just for fun.

I hurry out our front door, grabbing my loaded backpack and lunch bag from the hall on my way by, and hop into the car. It's 9:40; we're 3 little late.

When we arrive at the community college, Mom pulls into the drop-off zone and waves goodbye. I start my trek to the second floor of the nursing building where my chemistry class is held. When I get to room #226, I slide into a desk and shove my backpack under my chair. Around me students are yakking about previous classes, the coming weekend, and life in general. I swap howdys with some familiar faces, and discuss the coming exam with the girl beside me.

The professor. Dr. Brown, starts the class a few minutes late. He hands out some unit notes, an extra credit assignment, and a sheet of practice problems, then adjusts the projector and delves into his subject. Today he continues to cover the properties of equilibrium. Since I have the notes that he is teaching from right in front of me (Dr. Brown always gives out copies of his notes), I don't have to copy anything from his quickie sketches on the blackboard. I settle back in my seat. As this is the second semester of Chemistry, the general attitude of the class is improving. The real slackers have not returned, and consequently no one snores or leaves to grab a smoke.

Suddenly Dr. Brown glances at the back wall.  "Hey!"  he points out, "They put a new clock on that wall! I thought I was ahead of the game today..." He reaches for a huge wall clock that has been propped up behind his desk and displays it to the class. Everyone familiar with his habit of faulty timekeeping laughs. At least he has a sense of humor.

Despite his two clocks. Dr. Brown still ends class a bit early. I walk to the chemistry lab, get the key to my lab drawer, and sit down at my assigned section of table top. After a quick briefing, the instructor checks over the procedures we've written out ahead of time and marks our names down in her roll book. Since the experiment today (Quantitative Analysis of a Soluble Sulfate) is a long one, we get right to work. The girl sitting next to me, Rachel, asks me to be her lab partner. She goes off to weigh a sample while I set up a buret.

The various steps of the experiment take a while to complete. While waiting for the water over our Bunsen burner to heat. Rachel gets to talking with me and asks me what my major is.

I drop the bomb and tell her that I home school and am taking the lab for high school credit. She just acts polite and interested, which is nice.

The water starts to bubble, and I pour it through our filtered sample as Rachel holds the jar. I glance at my watch. Time to unwrap our other solution, which has been "digesting" in a beaker for an hour.

Rachel and I write up our data in the lab notebooks that we have to keep. I ask her what her major is, and she tells me she wants to be a vet. This leads to a conversation about our dogs (my Lab puppy and her Shar Pei). We clean up our supplies and lock our finished samples in our drawers for safekeeping.

I sit on a bench outside to wait for my mom and eat a PB&J sandwich. Mom pulls up a few minutes later, and I continue with my late lunch in the car.

"So how did it go today? Any Quizzes?"

I take another bite of sandwich and prepare to answer her question as we drive home. People often ask me what it's like being in a college classroom full of older students. It hasn't really seemed like a big deal to me, partly because home schooling has gotten me used to interacting with people who are not my peers. I can have a friendly discussion with people who are older than I am, even if I can't relate to things like driving, voting, and living independently. Most students don't even seem to notice that I look particularly young, and the ones who do are encouraging and positive.

Taking a course on the college level can be tough, and chemistry has been frustrating at times.  The two semesters of inorganic chemistry that I've taken (Chemistry 101 and Chemistry 102) have been very different. The difficulty of the material keeps increasing exponentially. Lately I've been working for hours at home with my dad, struggling to grasp all the new information and concepts. But I've learned a lot of chemistry, and the experience has given me confidence. I know that the lessons I've learned at home have prepared me for the challenges I'll face a few years down the road.