Emily | Mt Roskill
“Usually the one that I go to for what might surprise others, is the fact that I never went to school until I was at university. I was home-schooled for 13 years.
My upbringing, my parents are very religious, so where I grew up in the States was very liberal in the school systems, so they kind of wanted to have a little bit more control over what I was learning, and then they just decided that they liked it, and so we never stopped.
They were really involved in the church, so obviously there was youth group and Bible study and things like that, but they always made sure I was involved in at least one kind of, outside of school activity. So I did ATC, which is Air Training Corp for a little bit. I did archery for a few years. I did Girls Scouts for a really long time before I moved over here. So just making sure I had those opportunities to actually meet kids my age. I really appreciate, like I said, how independent it made me, and also it gave me a lot of free time to read, and kind of figure out my interests and things like that, because like, I would start school at nine in the morning and be finished by noon. Then you have the whole rest of the day to do whatever you wanted. So it was kind of a really good opportunity to figure out what I liked, I guess
I’m very introverted, so I never really missed all of the socialisation of school and stuff like that, and it gave me a really good opportunity to read a bunch, but obviously it’s very kind of like sheltering. Once you get to university and you haven’t gone to school before, it’s a little bit of a learning curve.
Well I moved to New Zealand 12 years ago, and to Auckland about six years ago, for university. I’ve always found that home-schooling gave me a really good sense of independence I guess, because I’ve kind of had to teach myself a lot of it. So when I’m working, I’m a nanny, I take care of a little seven year old girl, and a lot of it is kind of like trying to teach her a little bit of that independence, because when I showed up, she didn’t get dressed by herself, she didn’t feed herself dinner. She had people helping her with everything, and I think it’s just kind of like trying to pass on a little bit of that independence, so she can do stuff for herself.
I think, this is going to sound really cliché, but having good people around you as a support system is very important. It doesn’t have to be family, because not everyone’s close with their family, but it’s kind of the family you make yourself. The people that you can kind of rely on when you have a problem, and you need to be like, hey can you help me with this thing, and just knowing that you have those people that will always be there for you.”
