Home...

I live in Rexburg, Idaho. I live here because I go to school at BYU-Idaho, which is also in Rexburg. Sometimes I go home to Lindon, Utah, but then I come back home to Rexburg. So...where is home exactly?

Home is where the food is. Or...heart. I guess it's where the heart is. The only problem is that my heart is in two different places. Sometimes I feel like I really want to be in Utah, and other times I am in Utah, and I want to be here in Rexburg. Even when I come home to Lindon for good, I'm not sure I will really feel completely 'at home.'

This is kind of a useless rant...I just really don't want this semester to be over, but in some ways I really do. Bleh. I'm almost tempted to just stay another semester, but I don't have the money. I need to be earning mulah for the mish, not spending it on education. See, it's not the 'good/bad' decisions in life that are hard. It's the 'good/good' decisions. Getting an education is a really important thing. Our knowledge is the only thing we can take from this life when we die. On the other hand, earning money for a mission is probably more important. It's not about what's good and what's bad. It's about what's good and what's better, or even best.

I'm not going to stay another semester, though I really would like to. I'll come back in a few years to finish what I've started here. :)

This semester isn't even over. Everyone's talking like we're done learning for the year (except my teachers, of course), but really we have 3 more weeks. Maybe 2 and a half...

Anyway, I'll stop talking now. Y'all can go about your lives now.

Have a nice day...

-Moscas

June 12, 2010...

...is the date today.

I've been out of high school for 2 weeks and 3 days now. I don't think it has really hit me yet, or if it ever will, that I'm officially done with that cute little place we call PHS... One of these days I'll be out buying kitchen supplies, or laundry detergent, and it will occur to me that I'm really moving on with my life. One of these days...

Until then, I'll just act like I know what I'm doing with myself. I don't have any commitments except work and various family/church obligations, so my life feels kind of...empty. I feel like I need to start a project or something. Take a class. *Gasp!* I know...I'm thinking about educating myself...on purpose?! 

Yup.

Then again...that's really how my whole educational experience has been. My mom pulled my siblings and me out of grade school after I finished the 5th grade, and she home schooled us for four years, give or take. I honestly learned more in those four years than I've learned before or since. I didn't necessarily learn more facts or knowledge or skills, but I learned one thing that would become one of the most valuable pieces of knowledge I would ever have. I learned that my education is my own. Just because the state requires that we send children from 5-18 to school doesn't mean that it's the state's responsibility to educate them. They may require them to go to school, but they can't force a child to learn. There have probably been more students than the state would admit that went through 13 years of school and didn't learn a thing. That's why I was so grateful for my insightful mother, that saw how much school was getting in the way of my education. Those four years did me a world of good. During those four years of home schooling, I was given the liberty to study whatever it was I wanted. Anything I was interested in. Just think of the possibilities...

At first, I didn't want to study anything. If I got to choose, then I'd choose to study nothing. I think anyone right out of public school would have done the same thing. And then, after a few months of learning about paper airplanes, or building a makeshift stage in our basement and putting on shows for the family, I began to see how fun learning could be. I began to realize that school wasn't all about memorizing facts and dates of what happened when, but that it was more about applying myself and becoming something. 

That's when my education became my own. I could now see how valuable education was, and that it wasn't going to happen unless I did it myself. Not just because I was home schooled and that there wasn't a teacher there to spoon feed me, but because no matter how many hours I spent in a classroom, I wouldn't learn a thing unless I chose to. I wouldn't learn a thing until I invested myself in what was being taught. 

Education can't just happen on the outside. It's got to be internalized before it can really become a part of us. We can go to school for 13+ years and not learn a thing until we open up our eyes, ears, and hearts to what's being taught. Learning to love learning made this so much easier. Events like the revolutionary war weren't just a bunch of names and dates on a page anymore. They were things that really happened. That war was a real nation of real people doing their best to defend themselves and their families. It really did happen. 

So, my education became more of an adventure, a quest for knowledge, instead of some dry, boring thing that I "had" to do or the state would come looking for me...or...something like that. 

Those four years were some of the most valuable of my life. I wouldn't trade them for anything. Yeah, it was "weird" to be a home schooler. I honestly didn't have a ton of friends during that time. Most of the people I interacted with were other home schoolers that were just as "weird" as I was. Okay, I wasn't really that weird. It just seemed that every time someone found out that I was home schooled, there was some little switch that flipped inside their head that said, 'Wait a second, I can't be talking to you. You're one of those "weird" people with no social life. Is it even legal for me to be talking to you right now?' 

So I like to exaggerate a little. Sue me. 

Not really...I don't really ever want to be sued. The point is, those four years were worth all the 'trials and persecutions' in the world, and I wouldn't trade them for the world, because my education is now really, truly, my education. 

Thanks mom for pulling me out of school and turning me into a social misfit. ;) I couldn't be more grateful. Really. :)

Have a nice day, eh?

-Joey

Summer!

So...it's been an entire week since high school officially ended, but it feels like it's been at least 3. A week ago I was on my way to the David O. Mckay Events Center to practice with the choir for graduation. So many things have happened since then, but I think more than that, I have had a paradigm change. A week ago, high school was my world. It was my world. There was nothing outside high school except family, which I regret to say, wasn't as much a part of my life as they should have been. I was always off somewhere with my high school friends, doing something that I'm sure was productive, or at least not destructive...but I didn't spend enough time with my siblings, with my parents. That's what I need to do this summer. Spend a lot of quality time with my family. Anyway, this paradigm shift that I've had...it's an amazing thing, really. One day I'm in high school, hanging out with my high school friends, and the next day, I'm not in high school, and I'm hanging out with friends that are no longer my high school friends. We're going to college this fall, we're going on missions, we're moving on, and we're done with high school. Forever. What was our entire life just one short week ago, is now gone. Out the window. Never to return. Is this a bit saddening? A little. I really enjoyed high school, but more than sad, it's liberating. I feel like I'm my own person. I no longer "have" to go to school. From here on out, my education is officially my own. Anything I want to learn, I have to pay for it, and I have to invest myself, because no one else is going to make me.

So, that's my paradigm shift. I don't know if that's even the right phrase to describe it, but that's as close as I'm gonna get. I'm done with high school, and all of a sudden, I'm a different person. I'm the same person, but different somehow. More responsibility, more weight on my shoulders...but FREE. I am my own person. That's what's important.

At the same time it's a little bit scary. My parents aren't going to be there to tell me to pay my tithing, or study my scriptures. Then again, they haven't really done that for a while. I've done those things on my own for quite some time. I just don't know how I will act without them there. Suddenly not paying my tithing has become an option. Or...it will when I move out this fall. I have done it my whole life, but they've always been there watching. They've been at tithing settlement and have heard me declare myself a "full tithe payer". So now that they're not there, will I still act the same?

I hope so. I sincerely hope so. I am confident that when I go out into this world, I will take with me not only their examples, and the memory of their faithfulness, but also my own testimony of the truthfulness of the gospel. I know for myself that if I pay my tithing faithfully that Heavenly Father will be watching out for me. He'll have my back, so to speak. And if things don't always go so well, I will know that whatever happens, it will be for the better. As long as I am in the right place, doing what I know to be right, then whatever happens will "give [me] experience, and shall be for [my] good." (D&C 122:7)

So with that, goodbye high school, and hello world.

Have a nice day,

-Moscas