Hello, everyone.

[JennyG]

Hi.

I am an ex-GIS dork and Geography major who stopped working to homeschool my kids. I also am a fantasy writer. My husband also works in GIS.

I joined because I am trying to get back into maps for a couple of my novels, just for fun. 😊 It's been awhile since I've done much, so I'm a little rusty.

I look forward to reading what you all have to say.

[Kellerica]

Well, you certainly sound like you have a good background for mapmaking! I look forward to seeing what you'll come up with. Nice to have you along, welcome to the Guild!

[Tiana]

It's actually possible to pull Gis data into Other World Mapper if you want to 'fantasy map'-ify something from the real world, something you might find more useful than me. Welcome to the guild. Good luck with the kids. It's a big job. I was homeschooled. As a kid who was fully shaped by this experience of home education, and made into what I am today, I advise you of the following things:

-ask your kids if they want to go to school or continue being home schooled when they're old enough to think about these things. I always appreciated that my mother let me consent to continuing homeschooling, unlike some of my homeschooled friends who were literally trapped by their parents who wanted to ensure their kids turned out as religious shut-ins who would obey, some of those friends are married to men as they were supposed to be and some of them have literally never moved out of their parents home. Of my homeschooled friends, some of them went to school for the last few years, as their parents lost confidence in teaching the material, and others moved to online services with unified test systems, but I completed grade 12 via textbook by hand. My youngest two siblings got some kind of online schooly thing happening for a while, and I know they love Khan Academy as a resource for online learning for free.

-Take advantage of your time with those awesome kids of yours to teach them skills they won't learn in school. I am most grateful that I actually became an adult with a full comprehensive knowledge of what kind of things I needed to know to adult. Once, my dad just brought me the tax booklet and said 'do your taxes and then give it to me and I'll fix your mistakes'. Once, my mom forced me to go over mortgages with her literally all day until I fully understood the functionality of credit. The first time I ever interacted with a chequebook, they made ME do it. Tire needs to be changed? You're a girl? Oh well, you can come learn to change the oil too. My sister changes her friend's cars oil in exchange for pet-sitting. I had friends who couldn't cook or do laundry. Every single one of us could take care of a family and a house, with some wiggle room in the things we expressed interest in. My youngest two brothers have both built computers, and they got to claim that as an educational expense.

-You probably have some kind of provincial exams or state exams the regular school kids have to do to prove they're in line with the knowledge they should have. Do these and keep a list of the things you teach your kids, you'll need to make your own transcript at the end if you're not using some kind of service. If your kids want to go to college, this may not be enough to count.

I did not go to college; I applied to two... or three graphic design courses? Can't remember. I was accepted in Vancouver, and Winnipeg told me they'd need me to challenge the English 30 exam through an adult upgrading system to get a recognized credit. Ultimately, I declined to go to an institutional school (my home school upbringing makes me feel like one would be like willingly going to prison and wasting my money to do so) and just began setting up my trade when my best friend, who was in that graphic design course in Winnipeg, told me my skills were on par with the students. Because I had practised it since 14, when I began making forum graphics, I was at the same skill level as all of these other people and more psychologically prepared to be an entrepreneur than a student.

None of us have gone to get extended education. My one brother is working on getting a GED so that he can go to trade school, so obviously he's run into similar problems just given a different solution. I would not get a GED, I would have just picked that one high school course I needed to prove I had to knowledge for and paid a fee to challenge it at the exam. However, in the province he lives, they charge like, $300+ for this high school upgrading, and in Winnipeg, they charge like, $40-$50 for the books for the course, which is free if you get them elsewhere.

For a while I wanted to be a nurse, but I'd have to get math and science upgrades and unlike English I do not have the confidence I could challenge that exam and win, even back when I still considered college a viable option. It's not impossible, it would just be harder, if I decided I no longer wanted to continue in the arts. This outcome could have been avoided by me going to high school for the last three years, or by taking accredited courses through a mail order or internet based school for those subjects I required a provincially recognized 'credit' in.

Many of my friends went to Bible college. I refused to do this on the grounds of perceiving it as a huge waste of time and money, and I'm pretty sure most of them just wanted to find a boyfriend or girlfriend (successfully too, in many cases). One of them did three years, I'm shocked she never intended to go into ministry work or missionary work of some kind. Some of them have families. Some of them have homes.

Of my siblings, I don't know how they feel about having been homeschooled. I would do it again, even though it messed up my expectation of going to college as 'step two' and now I don't really know where I am, the game of Life has been left behind, I might be on a Monopoly board? I think one or two of them might have thrived better in school. I think it shaped me into someone who was more competent at managing a household and with the self-driven hustle to go and make a business of drawing maps.

One thing you have that a work away parent does not have is the opportunity to really be part of your children's lives from all angles. We didn't just learn together, we also did a very basic form of roleplaying by telling stories together, and we made music, and art, and ultimately mom did take advantage of the chance to be our friend as we grew up. This to me was the biggest benefit. Every single one of us turned out to be a good, kind person at heart, and I think that's because we were never alone. Which of course also drove us mad at times, but we had something I see a lot of families don't have. I hope you get that, and I hope maybe you can use some of this to make sure that if one of your kids does have professional dreams, they get the right piece of paper to make it easier for them. My mom definitely just sort of 'figured it out as she went', we did have government facilitators who showed up twice a year to make sure we were sort of on course, as well as visiting all the other families who were doing it in the area.

No one can tell I was homeschooled. They're always shocked when I remark on having no frame of reference for their say, prom experience. It makes sense, of course, because freelancer with authority issues, but by now I'm just another regular adult. You can totally make it work, it's just a different kind of challenge than sending your kids to school while working. And you can totally have time for writing novels while doing it too, mom definitely had the time and brainspace to be creative with us since she wasn't invested in a job. She has one now, but eh, they do internet stuff.

Good luck making a map for your novels. They're on the easier side, you just have to remember to imagine the size of the page and how big the text will be on the printed version. Usually novel maps are black and white ink drawings, and those are great projects to start with for a fantasy mapper! just watch out or soon you'll be doing enormous full color posters. It's addictive!

[JennyG]

Thanks guys. I look forward to reading more on the forums!