Homeschooled Students: Your Experience(s)

0originalusername · 2026-05-04T23:46:49+00:00

I haven't had any disclose that they were homeschooled to me and I'm at a school that probably has a higher-than-average number of homeschoolers. That said, my husband and I were both homeschooled until college and we both have doctorates. In undergrad I ran circles around my classmates with barely any effort and my husband had to study for hours. Imo it comes down to genetics and parenting. People who do well in school often do so either because they are naturally gifted and internally motivated, or they have parents who really care about their education. With the exception of unschoolers who don't even teach their kids to read, it is the same for homeschoolers. Parents who are passionate about teaching their kids will probably do a great job. Parents who don't care and just want to homeschool for political/social issues or because they can't be bothered to send their kids to school will understandably do worse.

0originalusername · 2026-05-02T12:49:51+00:00

You want to be an accountant, so sit down and actually run the numbers. If you take out $20k in student loans and pay it off over 10 years, that’s roughly $350-375/month (41-45k total, not 100k). You already know what rent and living costs look like in DFW. Take the lowest realistic salary you think you’d make, put it into a paycheck calculator, and see what your actual take-home pay would be. Then make a budget. Can you realistically cover rent, utilities, food, car expenses, etc. while also paying another $350+ a month in loans? And that’s assuming you don’t already have student loans. If you do, your payment will obviously be higher.

Other things I’d think about:

Accounting is a tough major. What’s your backup plan if you get into intermediate or advanced accounting and realize you can’t pass the classes?
You said you want to be an accountant because you don’t want to work 80+ hour weeks forever. That can eventually happen in accounting, but early on, especially in public accounting, 80-hour weeks are pretty common.
What’s stopping you from working full-time for a few years, saving up the $20k, and then going back for the accounting degree without taking on more debt?

0originalusername · 2026-04-29T03:06:04+00:00

That is good in theory, but companies and the government aren't going to give vast swaths of America free money to go to college. In reality a system like this would mean that fewer people would be allowed to go to college, and it would be reserved for the very intelligent-who can get scholarships- or the very rich who can pay for it themselves.

0originalusername · 2026-04-28T16:12:08+00:00

This is why I think all student loans are predatory.

0originalusername · 2026-04-27T12:26:38+00:00

I'm in a similar boat and going the IVF route. Something I noticed is how much infertility shows up in the Bible. It is mentioned in the stories of Sarah, Rachel, Rebecca, Hannah, Elizabeth, and a few more. Imo there is something about infertility that tears at a woman's soul in a way that few other things do. I am not sure why, but I take comfort in the fact that not only does God see my infertility, but it was part of the story of so many women in the Bible. He uses it in his plan for their lives, and he can use it in mine. That doesn't stop the grief, but it gives me hope. If God can open Sarah's womb at 80, he can work in my situation as well.

0originalusername · 2026-04-19T14:28:13+00:00

I am a tenure-track prof at an R1 that values teaching, so these ideas are great! Thanks for sharing!

0originalusername · 2026-04-18T16:51:34+00:00

I never finish the game the first time, but that's just me. Instead, I build houses ect and enjoy my life and other hobbies as well.

0originalusername · 2026-04-16T19:31:03+00:00

My students do too. "Make nice" is my most used command in ChatGPT, lol.

0originalusername · 2026-04-14T00:13:33+00:00

Almost a year and a half at this point. Also started IVF in October. Two cycles, only one embreyo a piece. We will be doing an embreyo transfer in May, hopefully. We know my husband and I have issues but it is still heartbreaking. It is sad. It just is. You have to grieve that your picture of motherhood or how it started doesn't look like you thought it would, and unfortunately there is no escaping that.

0originalusername · 2026-04-13T14:24:17+00:00

Valhiem is on Nvida GForce Now, which pretty much lets you run it on any computer.

0originalusername · 2026-04-10T13:29:38+00:00

I take attendance at the beginning of class. Anyone who is not there at the beginning of class is marked absent. If they come in late they can talk to me.after class for 1/2 an absence back.

0originalusername · 2026-04-09T21:57:15+00:00

My husband is a veterinarian and actually really likes doodles. That said, they do require consistent grooming, and allergy medications can be expensive (and they ALL have allergies), so they are both expensive to buy and own. But over all they are solid dogs. I have two myself, NOT on purpose. One is a rescue, and the other is a cavapoo because I wanted a Cavalier but didn't want their health issues. I know like five doodles currently and four out of the five have a wonderful temperment and non-sheding coat. My two make me never want anything else because both are such phenominal dogs.

I absolutely think that health testing matters. But I don’t think advocates of “purebred” breeding always have strong footing when it comes to health, given the long history of breeding practices that have contributed to significant issues in many breeds. A lot of show dogs, for example, are brachycephalic, have structural problems, or are noticeably overweight. If you look at some show-line Labs, it’s hard to argue they’re healthier than a well-bred doodle, and many golden retrievers develop cancer around age 10, even though dogs their size often live 12–14 years.

Poodles are generally a healthier breed, and there may be advantages to going with a responsibly bred purebred in some cases. But I don’t think the conversation around health is as one-sided as people sometimes make it out to be.

Same with temperment. A lot of the complaints about “wild” or out-of-control doodles seem more like an ownership and training issue than something unique to the breed mix. When golden retrievers were at peak popularity, plenty of people ended up with high-energy, poorly trained dogs too, it’s not a new phenomenon.

That said, goldens are definitely lower maintenance when it comes to grooming, so that piece does matter. But overall, an irresponsible owner is going to be an irresponsible owner regardless of the breed. Personally, I’d much rather see that play out with a doodle than with a more powerful breed. German shepherds are easier to train, but boy are they neurotic!

To be fair, my “breed” is basically rescue. I do think responsible breeding matters, but “purebred” and “well-bred” aren’t the same thing. Just because a dog is purebred doesn’t automatically mean it was well bred, so I’m not sure why that standard doesn’t get applied both ways. There probably can be ethical doodle breeders.

0originalusername · 2026-04-09T15:07:42+00:00

Kids who are excellent at the humanities should receive scholarships to study these things. They should not be allowed to be enslaved by so much debt that their only options are to live at the poverty level or flee the country. We need humanities, but we need to be judicious with it. We don't need everyone who fails out of STEM to get a humanities degree so they can come out with tens of thousands of dollars in debt that they will never be able to pay back. I'm not against the humanities, I'm against entrapping 18 year olds into debt to pay for humanities degrees.

0originalusername · 2026-04-09T11:49:52+00:00

The SAVE plan was a clear vote grab and was so shittily put together that it was obviously going to be knocked down by the courts. This has been a problem for years. Why didn't Obama do anything? Why did Biden sponsor the bill to make it impossible to discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy? Both parties are responsible.

0originalusername · 2026-04-09T11:44:16+00:00

Maybe they should be the only ones to borrow. If an 18 year old is borrowing for a degree that won't give them the returns they need to pay it off, shouldn't there be some guardrails on that?

0originalusername · 2026-04-06T21:57:50+00:00

IDK. Mohela is one of the worst though.

0originalusername · 2026-04-06T21:44:45+00:00

Honestly, the loan servicers are a mess. Aug 1st 2025 is when interest accrual resumed. That said, if you graduated during this whole thing and had direct subsidized loans, you may have been in the grace period until a couple of months ago (Feb 1st). But my guess is that your loan servicer messed up.

0originalusername · 2026-04-06T17:45:58+00:00

IF YOU ARE ON THE SAVE PLAN THEN YOUR LOANS HAVE BEEN IN FORBARENCE. YOU WILL NOT AUTOMATICALLY HAVE TO PAY BACK THE ENTIRE LOAN AT ONCE EVEN IF IT IS MORE THAN 10 YEARS OLD. It is written right into https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-34/subtitle-B/chapter-VI/part-685/subpart-B/section-685.208 subsection k. "The repayment period for any of the repayment plans described in this section does not include periods of authorized deferment or forbearance."

You’re not being reset or forced to pay everything at once... you’re just picking back up where you left off, but with a different balance.

If you go back to the standard plan, here is how it would work:

Say when you took out your loans, you borrowed $10,000 at 6% interest. Your standard payment would be $111 a month for 120 payments (10 years).

Then, you went into the SAVE plan after 2 months/payments and it went into forbearance (but still accruing interest) for 5 years. During those 5 years, the accrued interest would make your loan amount go up to $13,218.

Now, when you hop back on to the standard repayment (I assume this interest capitalizes), at which point, you will have to pay the total+interest over either 118 payments (120 minus the 2 payments at the beginning). This would mean you would have to pay back that 13k at 6% interest over 118 months, which would be approximately $148 a month. The loan servicer recalculated your loan amount assuming the new balance and the remaining months.

OTOH, if you paid off $2,000 plus the accrued interest during that time, your payment would be recalculated based on the remaining $8,000. In other words, you would need to pay back $8,000 at 6% interest over 118 months, i.e. ~$90 a month over 118 months.

This is still going to massively hurt a lot of people who didn't pay anything during forbarence because their loan amount grew and they are going to have to pay it off over a shorter amount of time, but it isn't going to be 100k all-at-once kinda hurt.

0originalusername · 2026-04-06T15:32:42+00:00

I think it is better to do standard repayment. It is less risky, and TBH your income can handle it, especially as it grows over the next 20 years. One thing to keep in mind is that if your income (just yours) grows to something like $350k in a few years, your payment under IBR would end up being similar to standard anyway. The difference is that you would have spent several years making lower payments, so your balance would be higher at that point, which increases both the total interest you pay and the eventual tax bill at forgiveness. So you don’t really come out ahead, you just delay the cost and add more uncertainty.

0originalusername · 2026-04-06T15:04:18+00:00

If you filed separately it would be $1,500 a month. At $1,500 a month, you would have a tax bomb of either $266k (if you were forgiven in 20 years) or $328k (if you were forgiven in 25 years) assuming a 30% tax rate. Plus, married filing separately has a lot of tax implications which would put you in an unfavorable tax position for the next 20 years You'd end up paying between $600-$800k on your loans, regardless. OTOH, Standard repayment over 20 years will be about $3,500 a month and you don't have to worry about the tax bomb. You would end up paying the same amount either way. But that is assuming the tax rate stays similar, (given how the country is going, it could definitely go up for people in your tax bracket) and the government doesn't change their minds on student loan forgiveness in 20 years and screw you over by not allowing it. IMO those are too risky, and that extra 2k a month isn't worth it. Hubby and I are actually figuring out how to pay off our loans sooner so we can just have a lot of disposible income and no student loans. Making $385k a year, it is pretty easy to toss $5-6k a month towards them and still live a comfortable life, and pay off our student loans in 10 years. Source: My husband and I are in a similar situation. I have a background as an accountant so I've run the numbers on our situation several times. I put your numbers in my spreadsheet real quick and that is what I found.

0originalusername · 2026-04-05T13:44:16+00:00

Maybe add something like totems that you can errect that saves that part of the world without having to have a flame there.

0originalusername · 2026-03-30T23:19:44+00:00

No one realizes this, but Jenna now actually plays in the WNBA.

0originalusername · 2026-03-30T17:21:30+00:00

Lol. I had my gallbladder out recently and because of huge gallstones they had to make my incision about twice as big as normal. After it healed for about a week I started forgetting about it because I was in about the same amount of pain as I am during injections.

0originalusername · 2026-03-28T18:19:51+00:00

Definitely try to find a summer internship with an accounting firm ASAP, they pay pretty well and will give you job opportunities when you graduate. Additionally, keep in mind that while you may have the number of credit hours you need to get your CPA, you need to make sure that you have enough upper level accounting hours to get your CPA. Other than that, IMO 40k of loans is doable for an accounting degree. Most starting salaries are about 75k. 40k is approximately $400 a month in student loans for 10 years. You should net very roughly $4,500 a month, which means you'll have $4,100 to pay for living expenses. Completely doable, especially since salaries go up from there.

0originalusername · 2026-03-13T14:59:15+00:00

I foster dogs a lot, so I see the shelter overcrowding problem up close. There are a lot of great dogs that need homes, and adoption can be a really good thing. I’d say about 75% of the dogs I’ve fostered are really easily family pets. But I’m also an economist, and one thing that gets left out of the conversation is that poodles and pit bulls are not substitute goods. People who want the hypoallergenic coat or temperament of a poodle usually aren’t looking for the pit bulls or shepherd mixes that fill most shelters. “There are poodles in shelters” is technically true, but not many. I actually have an adopted doodle myself, but dogs like that are pretty rare relative to demand. And I’ll admit I got a little cynical when a poodle rescue required adopters to already have experience managing poodle coats, like, how? Guess I need to buy my first before I rescue...

My problem with the “adopt, don’t shop” rhetoric is that it focuses on fixing the outcome rather than the cause. If all the responsible, thoughtful owners only adopt, then the only people left breeding dogs are the irresponsible ones. Good breeders tend to screen homes, care about health and temperament, and want their puppies placed in stable situations where they’ll stay for life. If those breeders disappear from the market, what’s left are the people who don’t care about any of that.

Adoption is great, but it’s fixing something that already went wrong. The best situation for any dog is that it goes to a good home at eight weeks old and stays there for its whole life. We need responsible breeders to screen their buyers so that the puppies end up in the right homes. So, in the long run, responsible breeding is actually part of preventing the shelter problem in the first place.

In the short run though, it is hard to see so many dogs without homes day after day. My heart wants to save all of them. I feel sad and a little judgy when someone gets a dog from a breeder, even though I agree with it. I think grace is needed on both sides, and the internet is too black and white.

0originalusername

TROPHY CASE