Not all homeschoolers fit the stereotype at UNL

(Do you think homeschoolers are stereotyped?) Hmmm...

By MARK CODDINGTON
November 14, 2005

After a year and a half at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Burke Street couldn’t keep his background as a homeschooled student a secret any longer.

His friends were looking up online satellite photos of each of their high schools, and finally the dreaded question came to Street: “Burke, where’s your high school?”

“I couldn’t duck that question. Other things I could just kind of be ambiguous about,” said Street, a finance and economics major. “But I was like, ‘Well, actually, I was home-educated.’”

Now a senior, Street said waiting until midway through his sophomore year to tell his closest friends he was homeschooled was probably a bit excessive. But he was simply trying to avoid being hassled with the stereotypes that haunt many other homeschooled students at UNL, he said.

Like Street, many of UNL’s homeschooled students say they’re frustrated by the stereotypes of the homeschooler who is impossibly book-smart, painfully socially awkward and extremely sheltered and conservative.