Jessica Cheng '11

Jessica Cheng was already involved in her high school’s student council in middle school. When Jessica was 4, she got into Mrs. Lam’s pre-school class, which almost every Asian mom in Plano sought for their children. The class was for ESL students, but Jessica (and probably the other students) already spoke English well and had to pretend. Leaving the herd of gossiping Asian moms behind for the bus-ride became a treasured daily ritual. The students might have swore they’d be friends forever, as children do, but Jessica didn’t realize what a lasting circle Mrs. Lam’s class created until her pre-school friends were still around her many years later.

She seemed to fall easily into such enduring, exclusive groups of friends. Her parents were leaders in the church, so she had an extended family of “Aunties” and “Uncles” all over Texas. When she was in kindergarten, she was selected for an advanced-studies program called “Leap Frog,” meaning she had the same 12 classmates through eighth grade. Come high school, Jessica was excited and nervous to break free a little more, certain of the safety-net-friendships in place. She chose her extracurriculars for the year ahead: cheerleading, varsity tennis, flute for the full-orchestra, various non-Asian clubs, and student council.

Yet that first day of ninth grade, Jessica was stuck at home, tears streaming down her cheeks, staring out the window at a lonely and uncertain future. Her parents had decided to abruptly, violently rip her world away from her. Jessica was going to be homeschooled.Over the summer, rather than the band camp she’d marked on her calendar, Jessica was forced to attend a conference on homeschooling – where she appeared to be the only girl who would ever consider wearing shorts over long skirts. She felt like the only kid there with any “real world’ interaction and felt a little sorry for these apparently-sheltered kids. She snuck away from the conference to play tennis. The speakers were fine, she conceded to her parents, but this conservative, backwoods world was not for her.

But her parents’ minds were made up. For at least the next year, she would be homeschooled. She was to be sent to various conferences and missions trips around the world in her course of study. After a school year, Jessica could make a final decision.

Day after day, she watched that precious school bus roll away and mourned her lost life. When she was accepted into a nearby business academy and her parents were tired of fighting with her, about a month in, she began to attend a new school – which wasn’t quite ideal, but at least it was school. She stayed there no more than two weeks at a time. Then she was back at home. Then traveling. Then some time at her original high school. Then home yet again. Almost every day, in both of these schools, teachers would mark her as “absent” on the attendance sheets.

Many times during the first semester, she left the state to learn a seemingly-random skill. One time, she attended an adult conference that aimed to train her in counseling depressed or suicidal people. “I was not ready for that,” she reminisced. Jessica jerkily juggled activities at both schools as best she could, from tennis and volleyball to band and volunteering; but most of her time was spent at home or traveling, according to her parents’ wishes. Jessica felt entitled to her ordinary life, and clung to it with desperation whenever she was allowed to attend one of the two schools. She hated this abnormal education. She hated this patchy life.

Winter break came and went; at the end of January, she was sent to Taiwan for a three-month missions trip. Since she’d visited Taiwan several times growing up, she took some comfort in this, which felt like both a return home and an escape from her parents. She spent the trip in hotel rooms with “roommates,” often other home-schooled Americans. They radically shifted her perspective.

The friends she made in Taiwan had undergone the same isolated-letdown, being pulled out of school by their parents – yet these students were not ignorant rednecks, or disconnected rejects. She met extremely intelligent, extremely talented people, who spoke with a wisdom way beyond that of her old friends and who lived with a purpose she couldn’t quite understand. Jessica was stunned. “There was a whole culture, I realized, of home-schooled kids, and I saw that they weren’t the people who couldn’t make it in the public school system… They were the people with the most potential,” she said. “I saw what I could become. And I wanted it, a little bit.”

She had been so certain her parents were wrong. She had fought with them so hard. What were these kids missing? What had they lost? She wrestled with the question for the whole length of the trip and tentatively concluded: those groups of friends she grew up with meant everything to her. Being homeschooled meant losing them. Unsteadily, she tried to pity them once more.

But when she returned home, she realized all her old friendships weren’t the same. She had changed. Talking to them was different now. She found herself frequently surprised by their immaturity or small sources of distress, or by the awkward silences that sometimes followed her talking.

She realized with an uncomfortable certainty what sort of isolation she would experience from her high school or church friends, should she choose to do this. Those friendships were the most important part of her life up to that point. She realized she could not pack them neatly into a box to be taken out and worn while she was home; they wouldn’t fit her anymore.

For the next few weeks, as her parents worked out her curriculum, Jessica weighed her options. Her school life? Her friends? Or… this other thing? These travels? This independence?

One morning, in their typical fashion, her parents approached her for a “sit-down.” “Do you have time to talk today?” they asked politely, and she, of course, said yes. The day dragged on, everyone knowing what they would be talking about but carrying on not discussing it. Finally, they sat her down at the dinner table and faced her with her decision.

“As you know, we promised you that you could choose after your first year. Do you want to continue homeschooling? Or do you want to go back to school? Please choose carefully.”

The room was heavy with weeks of silent contemplation. Jessica nodded slowly, thinking it over one last time. Then, with a bright smile, Jessica chose.

Her parents wept in relief.

There was still much to figure out. Anxieties about curriculum (she completed each year’s coursework in about two months) and colleges (she got into Business Honors and Plan II Honors at UT-Austin) demanded answers.

But she had chosen the path with the most potential, and that is every parent’s dream.