We are losing our first homeschooler

Our oldest daughter turns 18 next month.  She is wrapping up her senior year of high school in Cate Academy.  She has been attending some of the local community colleges as a concurrent student (high school student who is permitted to take classes for free) over the last couple years.  Starting this fall, she will be attending full time.  Today she tried to sign up and had a few problems.  I asked her to tell our readers about her experience.

Here is her report:

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Hello, I’m the oldest daughter in this family.

Two years ago, I began taking class at a community college as a concurrent student. This is a worthwhile to do as a homeschooler; it gave me a chance to get used to the classroom environment, different teachers, and turning in homework on time.

Now as I have graduated from our family’s esteemed academy, I tried to sign up for classes as a regular student. The very nice community college website told me I couldn’t get in because I didn’t have precedence, or some other such blurb.

So after wandering around the website (looking at apply now, register for classes, current students, future students, checking everything I could think off),  I sent an email of to the Admissions and Records office. Several e-mails went back and forth before I was told I had to reapply, even though I already had a perfectly valid college ID.

After I tried and failed to applying online, my mother and I put together the paper work and drove down to the community college. How medieval! I was the only one there that morning and after explaining my problem, the nice lady behind the desk took my paperwork and spent all of a minute on the computer. Then she told be everything was in order and that could even keep my original ID.

Then we drove home and I sat down to register for classes on my computer (which, by the way, is a really weird process). You first search classes, then place classes on a wish list, then you can register for the classes.

Oh well, I am now in all the classes I wanted, and am an official college student.

Hooray!
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Our youngest is just starting homeschooling as a kindergartener this fall, so we will be homeschooling for years to come.


UPDATE:  This is Janine.  When it came time to pay for my daughter's classes, she asked to use my credit card and promised to reimburse me.

[In our household, our children are responsible for paying for college. We started savings accounts for them when they were only babies and they have been adding funds since then.  Much of the money came directly from us or their grandparents in the form of allowance and gifts, but we wanted the children to have the responsibility of managing the money and its use.]

The grand total for tuition for my daughter's first semester as a full time student is $635.  My daughter responded, "Wow. That's a lot of money."  I burst out laughing.  If she had chosen to attend a regular university, the tuition would have been 10x higher.