At the end of eighth grade, freshman Grace Kies made a huge decision. Instead of attending the first day of school with her friends, Kies began her high school years at home with a laptop. After a life in public school, she made the leap to homeschooling. She didn’t expect that one semester later she would be back in public education.

“I wanted to try homeschooling,” said Kies. “I have a lot of friends who homeschool and I wanted to see what it was like.”

For the first semester of her freshman year, Kies studied from home. She would wake up and wouldn’t begin school until 12 p.m. Then she would get out her laptop, work for a few hours online and be done for the day. While some say it sounds easy, Kies disagreed, saying that distractions were constant.

“It definitely had an effect on my productivity,” said Kies. “I would settle down to work and then I’d remember that I needed to clean my room or do something else. I was always being distracted.”

A major turning point in her decision to return to public school was the homeschool curriculum. Even in lower classes, the work and lessons were more difficult. As Kies pointed out, homeschooling was a harder version of school except the work was online.

“A lot of people in public school think [homeschool] is easy,” said Elizabeth Anderson, a freshman homeschool student. “But we actually do everything that public schoolers do.”

At the beginning of second semester, Kies returned to public school at FHN. For almost two months Kies has navigated the halls, and her grades are up to date and she isn’t as distracted as she was.

“It was tough,” Kies said. “I was used to a middle school and my house, but now I’m in a high school which feels like five times the size, but I like the people. It’s nice to see people every day.”