Student Interview: Thomas Nielsen
Interview conducted: 9-22-13
1. Why did you choose to go to an online high school?
I was homeschooled by my father; he was a retired history professor from St. John's College in Maryland. He taught me from a young age--5 years old, kindergarten. His rationale was that the schools in the area--a suburb of Baltimore--were not particularly well regarded at the time. He felt he could do better. My mom worked as a pharmaceutical rep and he stayed home with me and taught me. At four they'd given me a toy piano that I really took to, so at a very young age I started playing piano every day--just 20 minutes or so at first. I really enjoyed that and became passionate about the piano. So between that 20 minutes per day and my Dad's rigorous curriculum that focused on the style taught at St. John's College, I was home schooled. The method used at St. John's is a method of shared inquiry, so you participate in a group discussion where everyone asks and answers questions. There are no yes/no questions. The result is a program of very thorough discussions with the end result of a greater collective understanding. It was just the two of us, so my Dad kind of played the roles of the discussion leader and the other students. My Mom would teach me math before she left for work in the morning. I also took some music composition classes. That's pretty much how it worked until 8th grade. The curriculum was not easy, but it allowed me to recognize the importance of interdisciplinary connections. By 7th grade, my Mom decided I had exceeded her capacity for our morning math instruction, so we started looking at other options. I tested at a higher level than the local middle school in math and science, so we started looking at distance learning options. We found the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth and I did that for a while, but it was not interactive. Teachers would email with me for instruction, and I didn't really enjoy that. Plus, by 8th grade I really started to think home schooling would be deficient in the social sense--I wanted to get out of the house and become a part of society. I needed more social interactions.
2. How did you find Stanford OHS?
I had no intention of going to an online high school, but the public high school in our area was really not that good. I had a bad experience applying to middle schools with my standardized tests results essentially disqualifying me, but I was reticent to go a private, prep school. Then we discovered Stanford's program. It was only two years old at the time but the program was very impressive. It was very interactive, with a web-based video conferencing setup that really suited me. The core, shared inquiry program of instruction also really appealed to me because it incorporated the history of science, philosophy of science and math, and fostered a level of discussion that I'd been accustomed to with the St. John's method. Plus, it still allowed me to follow my passion for piano. It was also more social than the Johns Hopkins program, and social was really important to me by that point. So, when I was 14 years old, I took the SAT, which was required for admission, and went through Stanford's very rigorous application process (it's actually more rigorous than the college application process!), and got in! I had to write a long essay, get letters of recommendation, and all sorts of stuff, but it was worth it because I realized very soon that it was a dream come true. All of the teachers had PhD's or Master's degrees or were professors. It wasn't so much that they had a degree in teaching, but that they had an advanced degree in Biology or whatever topic they were teaching. This meant that they taught at a very high level. And the core classes were the shared inquiry method I'd grown up with—only with multiple students. It was not without its problems, though. Socially, by sophomore year I was really suffering from a lack of sufficient social interaction. A lot of the kids didn't really seem to have the desire to go out in the world around them, but that's what I really needed to do. So I would make friends at OHS online via Skype conversations and peer projects and then go out and participate in open mic nights and other events and meet people in person that way. I made that lifestyle work for me. Plus I was able to practice 2–3 hours/day and compose music until I graduated. All-in-all, it was a fantastic experience with rich academics--not a single bad class. And it taught me so many things about perseverance. Like, I studied Chinese for four years even though I wasn't particularly good at it. It taught me how to be a good learner. Now I'm taking a gap year to work on music 6–7 hours/day, and then I'll start at Columbia in the fall. I'm currently preparing to apply to Juilliard for a dual-degree program that combines educations from Columbia and Juilliard. I'm already into Columbia and I have committed to go; I think I'm really very fortunate and glad I stuck it out.
3. What was your favorite aspect of online learning?
The variety of people I was able to meet. In 10th grade, I moved into a rural area of Maryland. The area had kind of a one-sided culture—mostly kids of farmers and people who did not have a diverse set of political or religious opinions. Online, I was in class with kids from all over the world, and when you get kids coming from all over the world, what you have is a tremendous diversity of religious and political ideas. It's one thing to discuss political philosophy with your neighbor, but to discuss political philosophy with someone who has been brought up in a very different political climate--like someone from Beijing or Kenya--is another thing altogether. That is not something you can achieve at a traditional school. The political and philosophy discussions we had were unique and remarkable.
4. What is your favorite aspect of your OHS in particular?
The personal relationships I was able to foster with faculty. They made themselves very accessible—they help with papers and concepts you don't understand, and pretty soon you have a relationship that you seldom find at a traditional school because the professors at OHS are so open and they exhibit so much passion for what they do.
5. What was your least-favorite aspect of online learning?
The lonely times; you definitely get lonely sitting in front of the computer for 8 hours a day. For a while there I was really disgruntled with life. I would ask, "What is the point of all this? Why am I doing this?" Even when I would go out into the real world and meet people, I would have to go back to the computer again. I don't think the school did enough to encourage us to go out and get into the real world and learn the lessons of citizenship and the qualities of upstanding living they'd been teaching us. They didn't emphasize the need to apply the skills in real life. It took time for me to figure out how to do that on my own.
6. What was your least-favorite aspect of Stanford OHS in particular?
I hate to generalize and label, but there were three very broad categories of kids at the school. The first category consisted of kids who were passionate about nonacademic things—they had huge passions for something, but it wasn't academic. So that was music for me. Then there was another group that were hugely into Math and Science. They were the Math/Science obsessed group. And the final group consisted of the two-course/semester type kid who was supplementing a traditional school program and really not into the community. The Math/Science group really seemed to be ok with being wholly obsessed with academics and didn't need a lot of social interaction. So what that left was a very small online social community—just a handful of people.
7. So was it ultimately difficult for you to get enough social interaction?
I was lucky because I could do chamber music and open mic nights and gain some social confidence from those things. Also, having been home schooled my whole life, I learned how to meet the kids in the townhouse community where we lived. I spent time developing my social life outside of school. That made it less difficult than it was for some people. At OHS, your social life is self made. It is what you make of it. If you have the confidence to get yourself out there, you will have a social life. If you don't, it's really hard.
8. How would you compare the quality of your educational experience with that you would have had if you had gone to a traditional school?
I am a strong advocate for educational reform. When we moved, we ended up with a public high school in our new district that was really quite good. It was in the top 100 in Maryland, but when I looked into it it really seemed to me that the good teachers were getting squashed by the bureaucracy. They were so tied to regulations, textbooks, and what they could and couldn't talk about. I was disheartened when I visited that school. I wanted to go in my Sophomore year when the social part just seemed too stressful, but at the end of the day the instruction at OHS drew me back. I didn't feel I could reach my goals in the traditional school environment. OHS is also regulated, but the bureaucracy of a tiny school with an open dialogue is different.
9. Would you recommend online learning to anyone your age? If not, what type of student might you refer online learning to, if any?
I think the term "online learning" is very broad; it presents a problem because OHS represents the best of online learning. It's not all the same. If we're talking about OHS, yes I would recommend it to people who have a passion for something and really want the time to devote to that thing. I also recommend it for people who are intelligent and want to cultivate their love of learning. They also have to have no qualms about leaving the social life of high school behind. At the end of the day, I can see now that the lack of all-day interactions with people didn't matter because I'm going to get that in college. I had an amazing academic experience and I'm absolutely OK with how it went. It was delayed gratification. The student needs to be ok with that.
10. Would you recommend Stanford OHS in particular?
[Covered in #9.]
11. What skills do you think online learners need to have that traditional learners do not?
All learners needs a sense of self discipline, but it's a bigger requirement online because you don't have the 8–3 structure of a traditional school. If you are not on top of your homework assignments and you can't persevere through the sadness about not getting out of the house more, it's not for you. It requires incredible diligence—I had to write a 25 page thesis at the end of my senior year. To make it, you have to sit in the chair and do the work on your own.
12. What skills do you think you developed because of your online experience that you probably would not have developed at a traditional high school?
I am more comfortable talking to people because of the experience because it wasn't something I took for granted; every time I had the opportunity to do it, I really relished it and used the lessons I'd learned at school, talking via Skype, and in my peer reviews, and applied them in person. I think I was more successful at it because I valued it and was aware of its importance. So the environment made me more social—I learned quickly that I had to get out and be social.
13. What are your short-term goals?
To work on the piano to the point that I will definitely get into Juilliard. Right now I'm working on a commissioned symphony. I've been working on it for a year and a half, and need to finish. I may also take a couple of AP tests for fun just to keep my academic edge before going to Columbia. Next year, I'll move to New York!
14. What are your long-term goals?
It sounds cliché, but I'd like to find a lifestyle that makes me happy. I'd like to channel my passion for music, argumentative and critical thinking, and other interests into a productive career that will allow me to make enough money to sustain myself. I'd love to be a film score composer or concert pianist. Who knows if that will happen, so I've also got ideas about intellectual property rights, maybe being a consultant. I'm keeping doors open, but I hope by the end of my sophomore year I'll have a better idea.
15. How did going to Stanford OHS help you get closer to your goals?
Well, the connections were so fantastic—through people at OHS I met movie stars, famous musicians. OHS allowed me to do this. I'm friends with a Vogue model. But don't get me wrong—it's not the name value, but what these people can teach you about how to be successful and channel your passions. The schedule brings these amazing people together and we can become part of these other communities—it affords us the opportunity to learn how to channel passions about our own interests.
16. If you had it to do all over again, would you choose online learning, and if so, the same online school? Explain.
I'm glad you asked me that right now. A year and a half a go, I would have said no, but now that I've seen the direction my life is taking, yes. And yes to OHS. Of all the schools we looked at, it was the only one that afforded real-time experience with community; an incredibly quality of teaching; a huge variety of high-caliber courses; and, of course, the Stanford diploma. So I would've stuck with my choices. Four years ago, Ivy league schools didn't really respect us. There is still a bit of a stigma at some of the Ivy leagues, but it's really changed. From my class, three of us are going to Columbia and a handful got into Stanford. The top schools are realizing that it's a serious program. If you devote yourself to OHS you will get into a good school and you will have the skills and tool kit to do well once you get there.
17. Did you make friends virtually? Explain. [We've discussed this some already, but if you have anything else to add...]
I did ok in that regard. I made one very, very close friend, and that will be a lifelong friendship. She lives in Florida. We met while doing a peer review when we were both Freshmen. We were thrown into this new experience and very open to getting to know each other. She has cystic fibrosis, so she taught me so much about appreciating life and living life to the fullest every day. She's a very important part of my life—closer than most of my in-person friendships. Since we met, we would fly up and down to see each other 4–5 times per year. I've built other friendships at OHS that will last into college. I would say that they, too, are deeper than most. You make fewer friends than perhaps in a high school social circle, but the few you do make will be deep. There's definitely something about the distance that encourages you to be more open and real maybe than if you were face to face.
18. What would you say makes a good online instructor? What characteristics are necessary/helpful for the instructor to be effective in an online environment?
I think that they don't talk at you, but with you. That's important in real-life classrooms, too, but online you can search online video lectures to get the information you need. What matters is having a teacher who can really foster the discussion—tailor it to us. That was so important. When the teacher would step back and foster discussion and be very open with everyone, even in the most factual classes we would get into interesting beliefs and opinions and learn so much more than a static video could have taught us.
19. What is your favorite memory of high school?
I have two answers. First, in my moral philosophy class I had to do a big, final thesis on Nietzsche's opinion of art. I wrote a 15 page essay and a piano piece about Nietzsche and his opinions on religion and such. I'll never forget being just a couple weeks away from graduating and having to give a big pitch for this final project to the class. I played the piano while I was reading, and the music was going with what I was saying. It just worked, and it was not something I could have done except in that environment.
The other memory is of our graduation ceremony. It was in-person at Stanford, and we all went. We had an awards ceremony and a prom. It sounds nerdy, and it was, but it was really wonderful. I took the best friend I told you about to the prom. It was just such a special night to be with everyone in person that you'd been with all this time from a distance and there was import in knowing that it was the last time you would all be together. As they say, "The oldest you've ever been, the youngest you'll ever be." It just exemplified that even online you can make tremendous personal connections and relationships that are real and tangible.
20. Do you have anything else you'd like to add?
I guess I'd just like to stress the importance of the fantastic teachers and learning community at OHS. That live learning community cannot be replaced by a distance-based, email type program. I'd also encourage students at OHS to go out in the world and really, really apply the lessons we've learned. All-together, what I got from OHS formed a very good and very productive learning experience for which I am truly grateful.
1. Why did you choose to go to an online high school?
I was homeschooled by my father; he was a retired history professor from St. John's College in Maryland. He taught me from a young age--5 years old, kindergarten. His rationale was that the schools in the area--a suburb of Baltimore--were not particularly well regarded at the time. He felt he could do better. My mom worked as a pharmaceutical rep and he stayed home with me and taught me. At four they'd given me a toy piano that I really took to, so at a very young age I started playing piano every day--just 20 minutes or so at first. I really enjoyed that and became passionate about the piano. So between that 20 minutes per day and my Dad's rigorous curriculum that focused on the style taught at St. John's College, I was home schooled. The method used at St. John's is a method of shared inquiry, so you participate in a group discussion where everyone asks and answers questions. There are no yes/no questions. The result is a program of very thorough discussions with the end result of a greater collective understanding. It was just the two of us, so my Dad kind of played the roles of the discussion leader and the other students. My Mom would teach me math before she left for work in the morning. I also took some music composition classes. That's pretty much how it worked until 8th grade. The curriculum was not easy, but it allowed me to recognize the importance of interdisciplinary connections. By 7th grade, my Mom decided I had exceeded her capacity for our morning math instruction, so we started looking at other options. I tested at a higher level than the local middle school in math and science, so we started looking at distance learning options. We found the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth and I did that for a while, but it was not interactive. Teachers would email with me for instruction, and I didn't really enjoy that. Plus, by 8th grade I really started to think home schooling would be deficient in the social sense--I wanted to get out of the house and become a part of society. I needed more social interactions.
2. How did you find Stanford OHS?
I had no intention of going to an online high school, but the public high school in our area was really not that good. I had a bad experience applying to middle schools with my standardized tests results essentially disqualifying me, but I was reticent to go a private, prep school. Then we discovered Stanford's program. It was only two years old at the time but the program was very impressive. It was very interactive, with a web-based video conferencing setup that really suited me. The core, shared inquiry program of instruction also really appealed to me because it incorporated the history of science, philosophy of science and math, and fostered a level of discussion that I'd been accustomed to with the St. John's method. Plus, it still allowed me to follow my passion for piano. It was also more social than the Johns Hopkins program, and social was really important to me by that point. So, when I was 14 years old, I took the SAT, which was required for admission, and went through Stanford's very rigorous application process (it's actually more rigorous than the college application process!), and got in! I had to write a long essay, get letters of recommendation, and all sorts of stuff, but it was worth it because I realized very soon that it was a dream come true. All of the teachers had PhD's or Master's degrees or were professors. It wasn't so much that they had a degree in teaching, but that they had an advanced degree in Biology or whatever topic they were teaching. This meant that they taught at a very high level. And the core classes were the shared inquiry method I'd grown up with—only with multiple students. It was not without its problems, though. Socially, by sophomore year I was really suffering from a lack of sufficient social interaction. A lot of the kids didn't really seem to have the desire to go out in the world around them, but that's what I really needed to do. So I would make friends at OHS online via Skype conversations and peer projects and then go out and participate in open mic nights and other events and meet people in person that way. I made that lifestyle work for me. Plus I was able to practice 2–3 hours/day and compose music until I graduated. All-in-all, it was a fantastic experience with rich academics--not a single bad class. And it taught me so many things about perseverance. Like, I studied Chinese for four years even though I wasn't particularly good at it. It taught me how to be a good learner. Now I'm taking a gap year to work on music 6–7 hours/day, and then I'll start at Columbia in the fall. I'm currently preparing to apply to Juilliard for a dual-degree program that combines educations from Columbia and Juilliard. I'm already into Columbia and I have committed to go; I think I'm really very fortunate and glad I stuck it out.
3. What was your favorite aspect of online learning?
The variety of people I was able to meet. In 10th grade, I moved into a rural area of Maryland. The area had kind of a one-sided culture—mostly kids of farmers and people who did not have a diverse set of political or religious opinions. Online, I was in class with kids from all over the world, and when you get kids coming from all over the world, what you have is a tremendous diversity of religious and political ideas. It's one thing to discuss political philosophy with your neighbor, but to discuss political philosophy with someone who has been brought up in a very different political climate--like someone from Beijing or Kenya--is another thing altogether. That is not something you can achieve at a traditional school. The political and philosophy discussions we had were unique and remarkable.
4. What is your favorite aspect of your OHS in particular?
The personal relationships I was able to foster with faculty. They made themselves very accessible—they help with papers and concepts you don't understand, and pretty soon you have a relationship that you seldom find at a traditional school because the professors at OHS are so open and they exhibit so much passion for what they do.
5. What was your least-favorite aspect of online learning?
The lonely times; you definitely get lonely sitting in front of the computer for 8 hours a day. For a while there I was really disgruntled with life. I would ask, "What is the point of all this? Why am I doing this?" Even when I would go out into the real world and meet people, I would have to go back to the computer again. I don't think the school did enough to encourage us to go out and get into the real world and learn the lessons of citizenship and the qualities of upstanding living they'd been teaching us. They didn't emphasize the need to apply the skills in real life. It took time for me to figure out how to do that on my own.
6. What was your least-favorite aspect of Stanford OHS in particular?
I hate to generalize and label, but there were three very broad categories of kids at the school. The first category consisted of kids who were passionate about nonacademic things—they had huge passions for something, but it wasn't academic. So that was music for me. Then there was another group that were hugely into Math and Science. They were the Math/Science obsessed group. And the final group consisted of the two-course/semester type kid who was supplementing a traditional school program and really not into the community. The Math/Science group really seemed to be ok with being wholly obsessed with academics and didn't need a lot of social interaction. So what that left was a very small online social community—just a handful of people.
7. So was it ultimately difficult for you to get enough social interaction?
I was lucky because I could do chamber music and open mic nights and gain some social confidence from those things. Also, having been home schooled my whole life, I learned how to meet the kids in the townhouse community where we lived. I spent time developing my social life outside of school. That made it less difficult than it was for some people. At OHS, your social life is self made. It is what you make of it. If you have the confidence to get yourself out there, you will have a social life. If you don't, it's really hard.
8. How would you compare the quality of your educational experience with that you would have had if you had gone to a traditional school?
I am a strong advocate for educational reform. When we moved, we ended up with a public high school in our new district that was really quite good. It was in the top 100 in Maryland, but when I looked into it it really seemed to me that the good teachers were getting squashed by the bureaucracy. They were so tied to regulations, textbooks, and what they could and couldn't talk about. I was disheartened when I visited that school. I wanted to go in my Sophomore year when the social part just seemed too stressful, but at the end of the day the instruction at OHS drew me back. I didn't feel I could reach my goals in the traditional school environment. OHS is also regulated, but the bureaucracy of a tiny school with an open dialogue is different.
9. Would you recommend online learning to anyone your age? If not, what type of student might you refer online learning to, if any?
I think the term "online learning" is very broad; it presents a problem because OHS represents the best of online learning. It's not all the same. If we're talking about OHS, yes I would recommend it to people who have a passion for something and really want the time to devote to that thing. I also recommend it for people who are intelligent and want to cultivate their love of learning. They also have to have no qualms about leaving the social life of high school behind. At the end of the day, I can see now that the lack of all-day interactions with people didn't matter because I'm going to get that in college. I had an amazing academic experience and I'm absolutely OK with how it went. It was delayed gratification. The student needs to be ok with that.
10. Would you recommend Stanford OHS in particular?
[Covered in #9.]
11. What skills do you think online learners need to have that traditional learners do not?
All learners needs a sense of self discipline, but it's a bigger requirement online because you don't have the 8–3 structure of a traditional school. If you are not on top of your homework assignments and you can't persevere through the sadness about not getting out of the house more, it's not for you. It requires incredible diligence—I had to write a 25 page thesis at the end of my senior year. To make it, you have to sit in the chair and do the work on your own.
12. What skills do you think you developed because of your online experience that you probably would not have developed at a traditional high school?
I am more comfortable talking to people because of the experience because it wasn't something I took for granted; every time I had the opportunity to do it, I really relished it and used the lessons I'd learned at school, talking via Skype, and in my peer reviews, and applied them in person. I think I was more successful at it because I valued it and was aware of its importance. So the environment made me more social—I learned quickly that I had to get out and be social.
13. What are your short-term goals?
To work on the piano to the point that I will definitely get into Juilliard. Right now I'm working on a commissioned symphony. I've been working on it for a year and a half, and need to finish. I may also take a couple of AP tests for fun just to keep my academic edge before going to Columbia. Next year, I'll move to New York!
14. What are your long-term goals?
It sounds cliché, but I'd like to find a lifestyle that makes me happy. I'd like to channel my passion for music, argumentative and critical thinking, and other interests into a productive career that will allow me to make enough money to sustain myself. I'd love to be a film score composer or concert pianist. Who knows if that will happen, so I've also got ideas about intellectual property rights, maybe being a consultant. I'm keeping doors open, but I hope by the end of my sophomore year I'll have a better idea.
15. How did going to Stanford OHS help you get closer to your goals?
Well, the connections were so fantastic—through people at OHS I met movie stars, famous musicians. OHS allowed me to do this. I'm friends with a Vogue model. But don't get me wrong—it's not the name value, but what these people can teach you about how to be successful and channel your passions. The schedule brings these amazing people together and we can become part of these other communities—it affords us the opportunity to learn how to channel passions about our own interests.
16. If you had it to do all over again, would you choose online learning, and if so, the same online school? Explain.
I'm glad you asked me that right now. A year and a half a go, I would have said no, but now that I've seen the direction my life is taking, yes. And yes to OHS. Of all the schools we looked at, it was the only one that afforded real-time experience with community; an incredibly quality of teaching; a huge variety of high-caliber courses; and, of course, the Stanford diploma. So I would've stuck with my choices. Four years ago, Ivy league schools didn't really respect us. There is still a bit of a stigma at some of the Ivy leagues, but it's really changed. From my class, three of us are going to Columbia and a handful got into Stanford. The top schools are realizing that it's a serious program. If you devote yourself to OHS you will get into a good school and you will have the skills and tool kit to do well once you get there.
17. Did you make friends virtually? Explain. [We've discussed this some already, but if you have anything else to add...]
I did ok in that regard. I made one very, very close friend, and that will be a lifelong friendship. She lives in Florida. We met while doing a peer review when we were both Freshmen. We were thrown into this new experience and very open to getting to know each other. She has cystic fibrosis, so she taught me so much about appreciating life and living life to the fullest every day. She's a very important part of my life—closer than most of my in-person friendships. Since we met, we would fly up and down to see each other 4–5 times per year. I've built other friendships at OHS that will last into college. I would say that they, too, are deeper than most. You make fewer friends than perhaps in a high school social circle, but the few you do make will be deep. There's definitely something about the distance that encourages you to be more open and real maybe than if you were face to face.
18. What would you say makes a good online instructor? What characteristics are necessary/helpful for the instructor to be effective in an online environment?
I think that they don't talk at you, but with you. That's important in real-life classrooms, too, but online you can search online video lectures to get the information you need. What matters is having a teacher who can really foster the discussion—tailor it to us. That was so important. When the teacher would step back and foster discussion and be very open with everyone, even in the most factual classes we would get into interesting beliefs and opinions and learn so much more than a static video could have taught us.
19. What is your favorite memory of high school?
I have two answers. First, in my moral philosophy class I had to do a big, final thesis on Nietzsche's opinion of art. I wrote a 15 page essay and a piano piece about Nietzsche and his opinions on religion and such. I'll never forget being just a couple weeks away from graduating and having to give a big pitch for this final project to the class. I played the piano while I was reading, and the music was going with what I was saying. It just worked, and it was not something I could have done except in that environment.
The other memory is of our graduation ceremony. It was in-person at Stanford, and we all went. We had an awards ceremony and a prom. It sounds nerdy, and it was, but it was really wonderful. I took the best friend I told you about to the prom. It was just such a special night to be with everyone in person that you'd been with all this time from a distance and there was import in knowing that it was the last time you would all be together. As they say, "The oldest you've ever been, the youngest you'll ever be." It just exemplified that even online you can make tremendous personal connections and relationships that are real and tangible.
20. Do you have anything else you'd like to add?
I guess I'd just like to stress the importance of the fantastic teachers and learning community at OHS. That live learning community cannot be replaced by a distance-based, email type program. I'd also encourage students at OHS to go out in the world and really, really apply the lessons we've learned. All-together, what I got from OHS formed a very good and very productive learning experience for which I am truly grateful.