Glen Stahl
“
Online courses allowed me to lifehack high school in a way that adults reserve for themselves: I designed my life to play to my strengths.
”
– Glen Stahl
Online courses in highschool are the linchpin of my busy life–the element of school that allowed me to achieve a state championship, leadership training, and an incredible career-defining STEM internship.
I now know that I’m a student with a hi/lo profile: I have learning disabilities (dyslexia and dysgraphia) with high comprehension/analysis. Over the years, my saving grace has been a combination of intellectual curiosity and high comprehension. But it took 4 early years of failure to get diagnosed. Those years crushed me with negativity and evidence of stupidity. By 5th grade, I was testing 3 years below grade level in all subjects (questions read incorrectly, math answers written backwards, letters inverted on spelling tests, etc). My family had a military move that year and my mom began homeschooling me. The 1st year we did no English at all, instead taking online courses in Latin and Java. Those 1st online classes hinted to me that I had strengths. My handwriting was never an issue since spellcheck and compilers caught all my inversions/reversals/transpositions. For the 1st time I was interested in school and devoured assignments. After 3 years of handpicked lessons on many topics, I joined a competitive school district as an 8th grade honors student with no IEP/504.
In highschool, online classes in writing-intensive, subjectively graded classes are perfect for me. I focus my energy on STEM classes at school and take humanities online, with these successes:
10th grade: won a rare internship at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) after a science fair win advanced my project to regionals. I have 2 years’ engineering work experience, $3000 for college, and a small 401k.
11th grade: won a state championship in rowing because the scheduling flexibility of online classes let me make it to the river for 100s of hours of long practices.
10-11th: commuted to a different school for Air Force JROTC where I learned key leadership lessons and gained insight into my own character.
The bullet points, however, don’t truly convey what online courses have meant to me. Online courses allowed me to lifehack high school in a way that adults reserve for themselves: I designed my life to play to my strengths. My learning disabilities are my greatest weaknesses. I have been tested within an inch of my life. I had years of occupational therapy and special ed classes where every year a new teacher spent the first 2 months deciding how to fix me but not really teaching me anything for the other 7.
My family tried everything the ‘experts’ said would help me, but the best thing I did was decide at the end of 8th grade to just be myself. No more remediation. No more accommodations. I know the best thing for me is to do my work on a computer, leave time to put my work aside and come back to it later, and/or work in groups. Teachers are always going to see me as mediocre and think I just need to work a little harder or focus a little better. That’s fine. My scores and GPA are excellent for a special ed student. As mediocre as I am, I’m a success story for dyslexia. My character has been defined by knowing people will always misjudge my mettle. My experience of special ed is that it focused so much on what I’m worst at that I almost lost all belief that I am good at anything.
With online classes, I have been able to live completely free of teachers who think I’m lazy or unmotivated for having bad handwriting and spelling. With online classes, my symptoms of dysgraphia disappear and my interactions with (excellent online) teachers focus on my skills in comprehension and analysis. Behind this keyboard, I don’t look disabled. I don’t look lazy. And I don’t look or feel stupid.
Breaking free of the internal noise and chaos of believing what teachers thought of me early on, I achieved more than anyone thought possible. At NRL, I work on the railgun and other pulsed-power projects assisting senior scientists, engineers, and technicians in high-potential testing of 100-kV capacitors for a 2 MV, 700-kA Marx generator, and assembly and rebuild of an 11-MJ electromagnetic railgun. My main job on the railgun is resetting it between test fires by cleaning the catch tank. My normal workday also includes time in the fabrication lab working with power tools and extremely valuable materials such as tantalum to build, rebuild, and/or 3D print components for the different projects. The injured little kid from primary school is still enough a part of me that I sometimes enjoy wondering how many of the teachers who made me feel broken then could understand the first thing about the job I earned at 16 years old.
Because of online courses, I got to choose which labels I’m taking with me to college- not the ones associated with learning disabilities. As an applicant my labels are Honors, AP, STEM intern, state champion, and JROTC leader. I’m not overstating when I say online courses allowed me to define my future.