In college, I learned how to be bored for the first time.

The title of this post is what was shared from a new member of my personal learning network who started school at 18. This happened because Kate was un-schooled. As a bitter ex-student who felt seriously duped by the educational system, I was intrigued about this practice of un-schooling. What is it? Should I envy her? How’d that work for her? Did she like it?

Kate shares that after a life of unschooling, it was in college, that she learned how to be bored for the first time. In her blog she shares, this:

“I know I’m supposed to talk about how enlightening the experience was. College always opens the world up for everyone. That’s practically its tagline: College: Opening Up The World. I guess my world was too open already. I learned how stressful being good at something was. You have to stay ahead constantly. I learned how to doodle. Before then, I’d painted and sketched. But now I was doodling endless circles and swirls and stacks of bricks in the margins of notebook after notebook. And I forgot how to think that I could do more than one thing. I forgot how to be a homeschooler. And after a while, when I realized that, I missed it.

When they find out that I was homeschooled, people ask me, “Did you like it?”

I’m excited to have Kate share some of her insights via guest posts here on the Innovative Educator, and until then, you can find the answer to, “Did you like it?” on her newly launched blog, Un-Schooled (http://un-schooled.net).