My name is Benjamin Isaiah Gall; call me Ben. I am a sophomore student at Tusculum University studying business (with accounting concentration) as my major, and I am working towards two minors in criminal justice and tax.
I was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, and I lived in that state for 16 years out of my 20 years of life. For most of my life, my family has been relatively middle-class. I remember as a kid that we lived in suburbia for a good portion of my young life. Later, we lived with the Grandparents for almost two years during the 2008 recession after my family lost their business. However, my Dad eventually got a stable job, we lived more modestly than before, but we lived comfortably. We moved again after a series of other-at the time-unfortunate events, but we now happily live in Greeneville, Tennessee.
I have never been to public school. My parents resolved (despite economic hardships at times) to homeschool all their children because they were dissatisfied with the Omaha Public School system, which roughly had a 60-70ish% graduation rate at the time, not to mention other issues with the schools. Instead, my mom taught us one on one for our early education until we were able to begin figuring out problems on our own. From then on, we were handed educational material and left mostly to our devices, with the expectation of completing it and honestly recording our grades.
In this way, my education was perhaps peculiar. Beyond general supervision, much of my late-middle school and high school education was independent; I would do my work and finish whenever I completed my work. It was simple, but not always easy. However, as a consequence of this homeschool education, I never had to take any high-stake standardized tests.
My first experience with standardized testing was in a homeschool ACT prep class. I took the test sheets home and performed the test on myself; my first test result was an 18. My most prominent feeling before taking the actual ACT exam was intimidation; I was worried about how a single test could affect my educational career; I went on to score a 28. Afterward, I felt that the test could not truly be reflective of my actual ability. Which was my “real” score the 18 or the 28? How could I suddenly be 56% smarter than when I first took the ACT only weeks ago? The only difference is that I knew how to take the test. Beyond the single oddity of the ACT, the standardized test has been unknown to me, and its absence has not hurt me.
