Thursday, September 8, 2022
Mikro at 19
He is an amazing person, this young man of mine. He has known what he wanted to do since he was 4 years old. He's on his way. He has finished all the high school requirements to graduate, but is still taking a dual enrollment class that he couldn't finish before he went to Kansas to do fieldwork in paleontology and learn to prepare fossils. He's brilliant, funny, articulate, kind, always volunteering to help, a loyal friend, and a good leader.
He's back home now, and I am holding his diploma and an awesome graduation gift till he finishes this last class. He already got to walk with his homeschooled friends in a ceremony at Central Park down in NYC.
It has been my great honor to homeschool him from the start. He began kindergarten at age 6, because I wanted him to get a chance to enjoy being a kid. He has been a perennially curious sponge who soaked up everything I could offer. He loves science (especially biology, paleontology, anthropology,archaeology, entomology, anatomy, and marine biology), history, philosophy, and linguistics. He is not a huge fan of arithmetic, but enjoys higher math concepts. He is a skilled spinner of stories, a builder of fictional worlds, a fun DM, and an accomplished journalist. He has studied Latin and German and Akkadian Cuneiform.
He will finish high school with 34 college credits from Arizona State (with a 4.0 GPA), and is taking a gap year before college. He has a secure path to admission to ASU based on having earned 24 plus credits there, and he may enroll there, but he wants to apply to Yale. He fell head over heels in love with Yale on the many SPLASH weekends he spent there taking enrichment classes. And they have an a track for the geology major that is specifically paleontology related, as well as an awesome evolutionary biology program. It's kind of perfect, though a long shot. ASU is terrific, but the closest he can come to his field of interest is anthropology, which he also loves, but it's not his main focus. So, once we see whether he gets in to Yale, and if they are generous enough that we can afford it, he will decide.
If he does go to Yale, none of his credits are likely to transfer. So he will be a brand new freshman. If he continues with ASU, he's a sophomore. He may apply to a few more schools as well, where his credits will transfer, or where there's a paleontology friendly major. But the financial magic of ASU is they are partnered with Starbucks, and he could potentially get his Bachelors for free! So that is a major plus, as is studying anthropology under Donald Johanson, the guy who found Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis). (He has already taken his Human Origins class!)
This coming fall he is teaching Evolutionary Biology to homeschooled high schoolers, and his favorite professor is acting as his Teacher's Assistant! (She is an amazing history, classics and religion professor, who is one of Mikro's beloved mentors.) He loves to lecture, and can actually teach, so he wants to be an evolutionary biology professor as well as a paleontologist.
So proud of this kid, who has always marched to the beat of his own drum. Go, geek boy!
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