My Will is Not Broken
Saturday, July 16, 2016
The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt :: Show Review
This show. I mean. I haven't had this complicated of a relationship with a TV show... Ever?
On one hand, I love it. Pure, unadulterated obsession. I watched the first season in a few days and when the second season came out, I watched it in one day. I quote from it all the time. Mostly silently, since no one else watches this show. Especially the first season resonated with me. I wasn't kept in a bunker underground, but I certainly was kept sequestered from modern society. Kimmy learning to function in society was an hilarious and relatable struggle. Just a snippet to demonstrate my point:
Random girl at a club: "Hey, you want to party with us? Are you into molly?"
Kimmy: "AM I?!? She's my favorite American Girl doll!!!"
The random knowledge of older TV shows with absolutely no knowledge of anything that came out in the past fifteen years is a hallmark of the ex-fundamentalist. Granted, Kimmy's shows of choice were Friends, Seinfeld, and Frasier, while mine were The Waltons and Little House on the Prairie, but the parallel still stands.
Basically, this show is my therapy. So where is the downside? Unfortunately, the show doesn't come without a few problems. With Tina Fey as a writer, you know the show is going to be ridiculous, funny, and tackle a few issues on the way. A lot of people have taken issue with the portrayal of minorities on The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. There is really not a straight white male presence on the show. At all. It's all minorities. Which is great, except when it isn't. I can see that the writers were creating over-the-top stereotypical minorities to destroy those stereotypes. They absolutely nailed it with Titus Andromedon, the show's "sassy black gay man" who is incredibly nuanced, with a backstory, character flaws and strengths, etc. However, the other minority characters are a bit more problematic. The writers have done a decent job of creating a backstory for the Native American woman pretending to be white (??) but her story is still incredibly problematic. The Vietnamese character is still completely underdeveloped and stereotypical.
If the rest of the show didn't resonate so much with me, I might struggle more with these issues, but I just can't not love this show. I love it.
Tuesday, July 12, 2016
how early college actually set me back
I graduated from college a few months after my 19th birthday. I had
a Bachelor of Arts from an accredited college (which has recently been
granted university status.) Most people around me congratulated me on
being so ahead of my peers. The detractors who dared to rain on my
parade mostly discussed missing out on "the college experience." Despite
being quite sure that my beliefs no longer aligned with the
homeschooling community, I was still a laid back introvert who had no
interest in the party scene that I associated with the college
experience, so I brushed them off. How could finishing college three
years early with no debt be a bad thing?
My
journey down the early college path truly began around 7th or 8th
grade, when all formal homeschooling began to crumble. My older siblings
had all graduated. In the past many of our subjects had been done
together and without the ease of preparing one subject for all of the
kids, most subjects were simply ignored. It is no wonder that my mother
was tired of being attentive to her children's studies; she had been
homeschooling for over ten years already. I did little school for the
next two years. I had textbooks that I was supposed to be working
through, but if I didn't like them, I didn't do them. With no
accountability, how many 14-15 year olds would? I continued to score in
the top percentiles in the year-end standardized tests, so no red flags
were raised. My mother felt that I was old enough to be self-motivated,
and if I wasn't, well, I was only hurting myself.
Despite
this attitude, we both knew something had to change for my final two
years of high school. I don't remember how we heard about CollegePlus;
I'm sure it was from a homeschool conference or publication. For those
unfamiliar, CP is a program where students do large portions of a degree
through test credit (CLEP tests and other similar examinations,) then
take the remaining courses online from specific colleges that accept
large quantities of test credit. I believe they now offer other advising
services for using small amounts of test credit toward more traditional
degrees, but at the time, they focused solely on distance education. We
did a lot of research, emailed CollegePlus a few questions, and decided
to go for it, but without using CollegePlus - doing the footwork
ourselves.
Through
tremendous online research and hours spent poring over degree plans and
test schedules, I formulated a plan. During my junior year, I took
around 14 CLEP tests: at least two per month. I felt so good during this
time. I was accomplishing something. I was very disciplined. After
acquiring approximately 60 credit hours that year, I took two years of online classes to finish my degree. Amusingly, I intentionally
"slowed down" for an extra year of classes; I
could have taken a few more tests and transferred 90 credit hours of
test credit, taking only one school-year of classes.
After
some debate, I decided to major in Criminal Justice. It was not a
choice my mother was fond of, but I didn't ask her opinion. She believed
I should go into a nursing field, despite my unadulterated hatred for
everything medical. Any mention of "fun" majors I was interested in,
like Biology, Journalism, English, or Psychology, prompted long
discussions of "but, what would you do with that." I loved what
I was studying and considered it a fair compromise. I was assured by
everyone around me that there were many jobs in the field. If not, I
could return to my original plan of attending law school to be a
prosecuting attorney. During my last semester, I took a required
Constitutional Law class that made me begin to suspect that I did not, in fact, want to go to law school. Further research into the job market solidified this opinion.
Due to my inconsistent high school education, I tested into a
beginning college algebra class. It took several years to finish my
calculus classes. I was (and still am) working as a manager in retail.
By this time, I had discovered that my long-term perceived dislike of
math was not real. In a strange turn from my upbringing, I had done a
tremendous amount of reading about the environment and decided that I
wanted (I might venture to say needed) to work in that field.
The conservative community's disregard of the environmental crisis is
highly convenient and I was honestly pretty disconcerted when, after a
brief period of research, I had to acknowledge that I believed it was
real. I looked at endless degree programs and researched job prospects. I
decided my love of science and apparent tolerance for math was suited
to becoming an engineer.
I began
to research schools. It was very exciting to me; I had always been
academically high-achieving, but in high school that did not open any
doors for me. We never considered good colleges; those are secular
(read: evil.) For my second degree, I selected a list of schools varying
from prestigious highly-ranked schools, including one Ivy League
school, to local state schools, all of which promised excellent
need-based financial aid. Being a second-degree student makes you
ineligible for grants, so any financial aid aside from loans needed to
come from the school itself. I had already weeded out many, many schools
that do not accept applications from people who already have bachelors
degrees, including some of my dream schools. I took SAT Subject Tests
because a few schools require them from homeschoolers; I took the ACT
and got a near-perfect score. I was physically excited all the time. I
had nearly completed my applications when the email responses began
rolling in; "I'm sorry, we do not offer any financial aid for second
bachelors students," "While we do not prohibit second-bachelors
applications, we rarely accept them, and will not offer any financial
aid." "We do not offer institutional aid, but there may still be federal
aid available in the form of loans." Schools with ticket prices of
$40,000-$70,000 per year were telling me that I would have to borrow the
entire cost of tuition for as long as it took to finish another degree.
To their credit, several included in their email that it would be an
extremely financially unwise decision.
I
was crushed. I had finally glimpsed what my life could have been like,
and it had been snatched away. Again. My degree is useless, but, because
I have it, it is difficult to get a more useful one. Many people have
asked why I cannot simply go to graduate school. Indeed, that is a
selling point offered by many advocates of early college. If you do not
like your chosen field, go to grad school for something else! If my
degrees were more similar, it might be feasible to merely take a few
classes and then enter a graduate program, but in my case (and many
others,) there are simply too many classes. Also, there is little
evidence that employers would consider you an equal with those who have a
more solid foundation in a field like engineering.
This
is not a pity party. I will be fine. I am fortunate enough to live very
close to my state's flagship university, incidentally a well-ranked
university for engineering. It was by no means my first choice, but I
will be able to attend for a few years to finish my degree without
outrageous debt. I do not make my experiences public to garner sympathy;
I want to make sure other young people or parents considering taking
this route to a degree understand the downside.
I
think one important reason families should approach any alternative
college option cautiously is that some of the kids who will be most
excited about this opportunity are also the ones who would most
appreciate the opportunities that a traditional university would afford.
I was very academically inclined, I was not being challenged with high
school curriculum, and the idea of starting college work was exciting.
It was only later that I realized all of the opportunities I missed out
on. Because of the doctrine I was raised in, traditional universities
and even most mainstream Christian colleges were considered worldly at
best. There was never any discussion of what colleges I might be
qualified for. I had no true metric for measuring my own ability. If
someone had told me at seventeen that I could be in an honors program or
involved in research,
I would have been incredulous. If I had been offered a full high school
education, even a mediocre one, I most likely would be attending my
current university, or a better one, with a full scholarship. Distance
learning is not the enemy in this situation, but it was a tool used to
extend the control that my mother exerted over my life past the time
when she should have been making that sort of decision.
I
have been told many times that it was simply my choice of major, or my
lack of initiative in finding internships, or my inflexibility in career
choice that caused this situation. All of these are possibly true. But I
did not start on an equal playing field. One of the biggest
justifications offered for doing distance learning as a homeschooler is
that college students waste time and money at universities when they do
not know what they want to do with their lives. By some twisted logic,
this is used as a reason to pursue college even younger, in an
atmosphere that nearly completely removes all the trial-and-error
aspects that might discourage traditional students from pursuing an
unrealistic career. I have no doubt that there are students who have
pursued alternative college methods and have been successful with those
degrees. I have discussed this with some of them. I am also aware that
many, many traditional students also come out with useless degrees,
often with heavy debt attached. However, I believe it is important to
bring awareness to the risks involved in this path, especially with the
increasing attention it is receiving for being a "godsend" or miracle
solution to college for homeschoolers. I met some truly amazing people
in the online communities of people following the credit-by-examination
& distance learning path. Most of them are older adults who need to
get a piece of paper that says they are college-educated for a job they already have.
For people in that situation, this method can save years of time and
tens of thousands of dollars. For most young people who need to gain
experience, education, and marketable skills, these degrees are all but
worthless. I learned far more from the process of organizing my degree
and disciplining myself to complete it than I did from the actual
degree.
I am
grateful that I have the opportunity to start again the right way, but I
am anxious thinking of all the students currently enrolled or looking
into accelerated distance learning who do not fully understand what they
are getting into. I cannot think of many situations in which this
method is better for a young person than enrolling in community college
for two years and then continuing their education at a traditional
university. I see so many online claiming that there are hundreds of
jobs on the market which just require a bachelors degree, any degree, to
get in the door. That has not been my experience. I have seen a handful
of jobs that only list a generic bachelor degree as a requirement, but I
have seen exponentially more that require a specific degree. Many tout
that a bachelors degree is the new high school diploma, but we simply
are not there yet, though we may be on the way. Less than 35% of the
U.S. has a bachelors degree and employers still do expect them to come
with some level of knowledge, which I do not believe most young
graduates of accelerated distance learning have acquired.
Monday, July 11, 2016
i am secular
It's hard to begin.
It is difficult to summarize a life; it isn't just bad, nor is it all good.
As I sit alone in my apartment in the city with my cat, watching Being Mary Jane and blogging about being an atheist, it is hard to believe that five short years ago I believed I was a Christian. Fifteen years ago, I believed that evolution was a hoax, that there was a good chance God might strike me down if I read Harry Potter, and that sex before marriage irrevocably damaged a female's virtue.
Being raised in a fundamentalist homeschooling community, I experienced isolation, emotional abuse, and a lack of opportunity. I recognize that not everyone has had the same experience, but I want to bring awareness to a socially acceptable form of abuse that continues to operate out of sight from mainstream society.
It is difficult to summarize a life; it isn't just bad, nor is it all good.
As I sit alone in my apartment in the city with my cat, watching Being Mary Jane and blogging about being an atheist, it is hard to believe that five short years ago I believed I was a Christian. Fifteen years ago, I believed that evolution was a hoax, that there was a good chance God might strike me down if I read Harry Potter, and that sex before marriage irrevocably damaged a female's virtue.
Being raised in a fundamentalist homeschooling community, I experienced isolation, emotional abuse, and a lack of opportunity. I recognize that not everyone has had the same experience, but I want to bring awareness to a socially acceptable form of abuse that continues to operate out of sight from mainstream society.
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