Not long ago an odd and wonderful thing happened to me. I wrote out a constitution for teenage happiness—some counterintuitive suggestions for reducing boredom and fragility. Based on my track record (taking a similar position in my school newspaper, for example, and hearing crickets) I imagined these ideas would not be popular or particularly welcome. The same things had been said for thousands of years. And yet the inexhaustible Free Press readership bowled me over:
“Stunning. Ms. LaRocca gives me hope for her generation and, like Bari, I am eager to see what she does next.” —Jack LeMenager
“Smart girl. Smarter parents.” —Joe Guerriro
“More Beowulf! More Ruby!” —Mike Carney
(Thanks, Mike Carney! There is never enough Beowulf! My word-hord is always expanding.) I am so chuffed and surprised by the positive response my essay has elicited. I feel undeserving, and I know I would never have decided to start something like a Substack without this unexpected flood of bolstering comments. But I will try to create something profitable here (in the unmercenary sense of the word), something of interest to a small group of people.
I only have one year of homeschooling left. One year to be splendidly, desirably lonely. Who knows what’s going to happen next year, when I go to college? The things I know are good about my life are all going to change. The things I’m unsatisfied with will probably stay the same.
But maybe writing about what I’m doing will help me stay in the moment, and multiply in richness and depth what precious time I do have. So this Substack aims to be an avenue for thinking clearly, honestly, and productively about homeschooling.
I am planning to add resources, as they naturally emerge in my own learning, for other oddballs who think making up their own homework assignments is a really good time. And despite my professed target audience I’m really writing for anyone hoping to escape the traps teenagers step into every day: consuming insecurity, alienation from friends and family, screen addiction. Just some practical suggestions for being happy (in the sense of flourishing and sane).
In other words, I plan to use this Substack to run from the vainglorious* impulse to not give anything away. Like when I returned to Latin summer school this year, my second year with the program, I had all these hard-won lessons stored up for personal use: how to prepare for translation classes, which grammar clinics tended to be most effective, the best study spots. But as soon as the newbies asked for help I gave all my secrets away. I know this was the right instinct—battling down that covetous desire to be the only one to benefit from my past experience and labor. So I will aim not to think about this exercise in sharing in terms of giving secrets away, but as passing along, through my own study of them, the books and people who have saved me. Books I’ve stumbled onto, people I’ve stumbled into.
This Substack will be unhurried, of varying lengths, a little nerdy. I’ll give credit where credit is due—I’m looking at you, mom, captain of all homeschool endeavors. I’ll aim to adhere to the calendar week, with a new post every Monday. But this is college application season, my friends, and I might be in tears/watching The Last Kingdom/in a hot bath.
Despite the reassuring run of generous comments on my Free Press essay, I don’t plan to enable the comments function at this time. I am seventeen years old, after all, and thus quite prone to self-loathing and, in equal measure, self-absorption—why I’m (ungrudgingly) not on social media! I would appreciate it if subscribers didn’t repost the writing they find here to social media platforms. If there is something substantive you have to say about what appears on this Substack, please write me an email—or even better, a letter.
Ruby LaRocca
September 2023
*Vainglorious is the Richard the Lionheart of adjectives. He’s what I’d look like with a neckbeard.
