Blog From A Homeschooled Teen

Welcome to the depths of winter! As I mentioned prior, this semester – the final semester of high school – is devoted to American history. With this comes new experiences, new stories, and new fun facts I can now confidently recite at the dinner table. While I’m now on post-contact American history for the rest of the semester until graduation, my fall and winter were spent collectively on Pre-Columbian American history. What better way to study the pre-contact Americas with…

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Over the last year I’ve been told that a common question I may come across during an interview is “what is your favorite book?” I must say that this one is a particularly challenging question to answer. Not as hard as “what is your favorite painting,” but still hard. While the mantle of favorite book does go to the Ramayana, I feel obligated to also include On the Road by Jack Kerouac.  Recently, I had the opportunity to read this…

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I often think to myself, what will archeologists thousands of years from now think of our society? What materials or records will survive? Will they think the Avengers were our gods? Without the constant chronicles of tweets clarifying the minute-by-minute events of our time, will future historians even be able to understand our cultures with only Stanley Cups surviving? In my current ancient art history class, I’ve had the opportunity to practice just this: the art of parsing through a…

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Woman From Willendorf, image credit: Art History (6th Edition) by Marilyn Stockstad and Michael W. Cothren As I type away, I look out the window to the cold, dreary, and rain-soaked Seattle sky and think to myself: Ah, Fall! It’s fall, which means pumpkin spice, the song This is Halloween serving as audio for every single Instagram reel, cold rain for Seattleites, and a fresh school year! For my senior year, my curriculum has sent me all the way back…

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Looking up, down, and all around, I saw so many frescos. Nestled up in the ceiling, set between two pillars, encapsulating a domed niche, they were practically everywhere, each waiting to be discovered. The still air in the vaulted rooms was cool and the crowd I had seen earlier amassing at the door to the museum was all but seemingly absent. They must have all gone to a different wing. Alone, I sat on a bench gazing up at the…

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I looked at the triptych and thought to myself, “why is that baby so ugly?” I can’t believe how quickly this year has gone by so far. Is it already mid-April? As I soon embark on an art history-focused trip to Europe, I’ve had some time to reflect upon the last quarter of Running Start. Fortunately, both classes I took involved no finals! Instead for my art history class, I was assigned a visual analysis essay. The mission, which I…

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Image Credit: Wikipedia Commons via ThoughCo. Combining many differing sources into a single curriculum is one of the many benefits of homeschooling. So far this school year, I have been attending classes at my local community college through dual enrollment (named Running Start in Washington State). While last quarter was a lab credit (chemistry), this quarter I am having a blast studying Medieval and Renaissance art history! So far the class has been genuinely enjoyable! I’ve been studying a plethora…

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My journey with art history, stemming from an afterthought to a definite educational and career focus, began with a single quote: “You don’t know what you like; you like what you know.” These words both introduced and concluded the Great Courses lecture series How to Look at and Understand Great Art, which helped shape my perception of both art and the world immensely. It has been over a year since I’ve concluded those lectures (which I highly recommend) and my…

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It’s been a while! Overall, I’d say that 2023 went well for my family and me. What could be a better way to celebrate the new year than by visiting the local Seattle Art Museum? Originally, my family and I wanted to go see the comparative Renegade Edo and Paris exhibit, which equated the works of late 19th century French artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec to the woodblock prints of Edo-period Japan. However, this exhibit turned out to be at the…

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I must admit that I love visiting art museums. In my opinion, art is one of the best ways to analyze the evolution of human culture. It has evolved from simple cave paintings depicting the day’s hunt to visual guides of significant religious moments to becoming a complex analysis of the emotions running through an artist’s head while splattering paint on sheet of canvas. Art is the embodiment of humanity’s mission to evolve and express itself. Fortunately for me, my…

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