Hi, I'm Marina. I was a camper 1998-2003, junior staff 2004, and adviser and project leader 2007 and 2008. People have pretty much stopped asking me why I'm not in school or whether I feel socialized, but I still consider myself an unschooler all the way. Reply
I won't seek you out or randomly friend you on Facebook or LiveJournal, cause I think you should have your online privacy from semi-adult-type-people if you want, but if you friend me I'll friend you back. Reply
I would like to take this opportunity right at the top of my page to remind everyone that on wiki, I don't speak for staff, Grace, NBTSC, or anything and anyone but myself. Kthxbye. Reply
I find it easy to divide my life so far into three easy categories: my childhood, where I ran around a lot and formed beliefs about the world; the period you'd probably call pre-adolescence
, from about age 11 to 15, where I questioned all those beliefs and had a lot of fun thinking philosophy; and from then til now (young adulthood
?), in which I've worked on getting along with people and getting better at questioning and defending beliefs. Reply
I grew up in Santa Barbara, CA. From pretty much birth on I had playmates with liberally-minded parents, and when I was about 5 we formed an official homeschooling group. I played a lot of fantasy games, usually involving twins, running away, magic powers, and dressing up a lot. I loved performances, and sat through the entire Swan Lake ballet when I was four years old. I was bossy. When we went to the beach I would sit in the car reading until my mom dragged me out, kicking and screaming, and then I'd have a marvelous time bodysurfing and making forts with driftwood. I didn't like bugs. Later the homeschool group morphed into the Santa Barbara Charter School Home Based Partnership, which was basically the same thing but we met in a classroom and the county gave us money to buy cool things and hire people who knew cool things. The Home Based Partnership is still going strong. It started with 11 kids and now has 72 and a long waiting list, almost completely thanks to my mom, who rocks. Reply
When I was eleven, all of a sudden I started thinking abstract things. I remember it as a total shock. All of a sudden one day I was like, Woah. What does God mean to me? Who am I as an individual? I must contemplate the void.
Seriously. I started reading books from the adult (fantasy) section of the library, like David Eddings and Orson Scott Card. I started journaling regularly. I stared at the wall a lot. I got into theater, acting, and singing, and enjoyed it hugely. I spent my free time reading, not playing with friends. I wasn't interested in hanging out
or shopping or talking about boys or clothes. I went to NBTSC for the first time when I was 13, but didn't really make good friends with anyone or keep in touch after camp. I was a bit lonely. Reply
When I was fifteen, I had a boyfriend. We kissed and held hands and it was absolutely thrilling. Then I broke up with him, which was not absolutely thrilling, but taught me a lot. I met friends my age and older through the California homeschooler's conference. I got my own email account. I started actually talking at NBTSC. I made friends, hung out at the campfire making really crude jokes, and went to the dance in a towel. I went on IRC for the first time when I was 16, I think, and became both boundlessly happy and sobbingly depressed. Stupid hormones. I flirted with not eating. My body and face changed shape and for the first time I considered myself not just pretty or cute, but beautiful. I fell in love a few times, and got my heart cracked, if not broken. People fell in love with me. I clashed with my parents, but only had one or two screaming fights. I traveled, by planes and trains and buses, by myself and with friends, trips of two hours and two days. I kept journaling, and started writing poetry. Reply
A month after I turned 18, I moved to Portland to live with and near unschoolers. I got better at job hunting, paying bills, plunging toilets, cooking, and not pissing off or being pissed off by the people I live with. I worked minimum wage jobs and went to community college and wrote poems on a typewriter I found on a street corner and learned how to play the accordion. Mostly I gloried in hanging out with people I loved. Reply
In 2005 I moved to Prescott, Arizona, to get a liberal arts degree from Prescott College, the unschoolery-est college I could find. I took this guy named Zack (camper 96-01) with me, and we lived in a sunny little apartment on a hill. I got really good at researching, writing papers, giving presentations, and directing my own learning academic-style. My favorite papers include Soup or Salad: Immigrant Assimilation, Separatism, and Multiculturalism, Bread and Counseling: A review of /The Tassajara Bread Book/, Cognitive Dissonance: How Reality Harshes Your Mellow, The Disney Dychotomy: Idealism and Cynicism in the Disney Princess Story, and my all time most proudest of paper and the one I will still rant about at length if you ask, When Normal People Do Abnormal Things: The Psychology of Perpetrators, Bystanders, and Upstanders. Yes, I like subtitling papers. Sue me, I'm a social sciences geek. Reply
I also rediscovered how much I love theater. I got a workstudy job setting up the old and minimal lights for my tiny college theater, and got a volunteer position which turned into an internship which turned into a job payed for by AmeriCorps at a local community arts organization. When I think back on it, that's the part that stands out most clearly: hanging out backstage, crawling up on the catwalk to set lights, doing data entry at my desk in the hallway next to the copy machine, sitting in on Production Committee meetings, feeling like I was making a real difference at an organization that affected hundreds and hundreds of people. My senior project ended up being a documentary for which I interviewed 9 volunteers there about their experiences and why they volunteer. Reply
Anyway, I learned a lot about the amazing and bizarre ways people interact with other people, and graduated in May 2008 with a BA in the Psychology of Society and Culture. I promptly took off over the Atlantic, and spent 9 weeks in Israel, Hungary, Romania and Croatia, before moving right back to Portland. Reply
As of fall 2008 I'm living with Zack in an apartment in inner northeast Portland. Our books are comingled, and we're planning on officially getting married next summer. I'm massively in love. I got a job with a neat nonprofit organization, matching up 5th grade kids with mentors. I'm thinking about buying a car, but I'd really rather bike. I buy yogurt at Trader Joe's. I'm getting used to having friends again. I still journal. Reply
I can always be reached at marina at nbtsc dot org, and I can frequently be found in #nbtsc on IRC. Reply
Some of my favorite things to do: stay up too late on IRC, fall asleep with campers, read books about smart funny slightly sarcastic people, have long conversations with smart funny slightly sarcastic people, and drink smoothies. I also love organizing community, anything involved with the performing arts, especially theater, writing poems and essays and scripts and stories, journaling, and listening to the likes of Greg Brown, Bonnie Raitt, Paul Simon, Jason Webley, The Weepies, and They Might Be Giants. Reply
My current favorite wiki pages are ClutTer, BookLibrary, the MadLicki, IRCDQT... um... yeah... can't think of others right now... Oh, I was just RandomPage-ing and found TheTruthAboutEducation which is really neato and y'all should read. Reply
My website: http://unschooler.org/marina Reply
Books I'm in the middle of reading these days: Reply
Things I don't know much about, but will ramble about happily and at length if you ask me to: Reply
Buy me a coffee. Ask. I'll love you. Reply
Edit This Page Show Changes Add Archive Tag Revisions Random Page List of Pages Recent Changes Main Page Log in