“I Wasn’t Prepared for College” — Former Homeschooler Warns Parents

A former homeschool student says she entered community college feeling lost academically and socially, warning parents that homeschooling can leave children badly underprepared when it is not structured carefully or measured against outside standards.

Her story was featured in a video by commentary YouTuber Anton Daniels, who reacted to several women debating whether taking children out of public school is the right choice. Daniels said he does not oppose homeschooling itself, but argued that some parents make the decision too quickly and may overestimate their ability to provide a complete education.

The discussion moved from one mother nervously withdrawing her children from public school to another defending the social opportunities available to homeschoolers, before ending with a former student describing how poorly prepared she felt when she first entered college.

Daniels Says Homeschooling Should Not Be An Emotional Decision

The first woman in the compilation said she had just officially withdrawn her children from public school and became emotional as she talked about the decision.

She said she was not crying because she regretted removing them, but because she felt overwhelmed and afraid that she might let them down.

“I really hope and pray I can do this,” she said, later asking experienced homeschool parents for advice.

Daniels immediately questioned whether some parents were making major educational decisions based too heavily on emotion.

“This is a life decision,” he said, arguing that changing a child’s entire educational path can affect them for years and should involve more planning than simply deciding that public school is no longer working.

He suggested that families should consider alternatives such as another public school or private school before assuming homeschooling is the only solution, while acknowledging that tuition makes private education unrealistic for many households.

Daniels’ broader concern was not that parents cannot teach their own children, but that not every parent has the patience, knowledge, time or structure required to do it well.

“Sometimes y’all hurting them,” he said, warning that children can fall behind when parents have no meaningful way of measuring whether the education they provide is actually keeping pace.

One Mother Says Socialization Has Not Been A Problem

Another woman pushed back against one of the most common criticisms of homeschooling: that children will grow up isolated or socially awkward.

She said her daughter had attended public school from kindergarten through second grade and was frequently disciplined for talking too much, sometimes even being required to sit through a quiet lunch.

In her view, that experience challenged the assumption that children spend public-school days freely socializing with one another.

Since beginning homeschooling, she said her children have participated in playgroups, co-ops, gymnastics and other activities, while also visiting museums, playgrounds and programs specifically designed for homeschool families.

Her daughter, she added, now has a close friend she sees regularly after previously struggling to build friendships in public school.

“You can be socialized,” she said. “Your kids can be socialized as a homeschooled kid.”

Daniels agreed that families with enough time and resources can create plenty of opportunities for children to interact with others, but he raised a different concern that he felt was often overlooked.

He questioned how homeschooled children learn to manage conflict with people they cannot simply avoid.

School, in his view, is not only about academics or making friends. It also exposes children to teachers, classmates and situations they may dislike, forcing them to learn how to handle disagreement, frustration and authority.

That is a fair question because social development involves more than simply being around other children. Organized activities can provide strong friendships and community, but children also eventually need practice navigating uncomfortable situations where they do not control the environment.

A Former Homeschooler Says College Was A Shock

The most detailed warning came from a woman who said she began taking community-college classes during her senior year of high school and quickly realized how much she did not know.

She described entering courses such as English, math, psychology and sociology and feeling “absolutely lost.”

Psychology and sociology were especially difficult because, according to her account, her previous education had framed many questions almost entirely through a religious lens.

She said she was accustomed to explanations centered on sin, faith and biblical teachings, while college introduced her to subjects involving brain function, behavior, mental health and other concepts she had not previously encountered.

“I was so confused,” she recalled.

The challenge was not that the subjects were impossible for her. In fact, she said psychology and sociology later became two of her favorite areas.

The problem was that she had entered college without many of the basic concepts her classmates already understood.

She Says She Had Never Learned Basic Academic Skills

English presented another set of problems.

The former homeschooler said she could diagram sentences well, but had never learned common academic formats such as MLA or APA and had little experience writing formal essays or critiquing journal articles.

She remembered being corrected for submitting a paragraph that contained only two sentences because she simply had not been taught the kind of writing expected in college.

She also said she had limited access to computers at home, which made online coursework even more difficult.

When one assignment asked her to find a recent event and write about it, she said she did not understand what the professor meant and literally searched the phrase “recent events” online because she had no idea how to begin.

Only after overhearing other students discussing current news did she realize what the assignment was asking for.

Math was another major struggle.

She described her earlier curriculum as heavily religious in presentation and said she did not feel that it had prepared her for the kind of mathematics expected in college.

“I didn’t know how to do, like, real math basically,” she said.

That description was her own characterization of her schooling, but the larger concern is clear: homeschooling can vary enormously in quality, and a child may not realize what has been omitted until entering an environment where outside standards suddenly apply.

The Social Adjustment Was Difficult Too

The former student said the transition was not limited to academics.

She described encountering language, clothing, tattoos, piercings and other parts of ordinary college life that she had barely or never seen before.

She recalled hearing a vulgar term she did not understand and realizing how sheltered she had been from common social references.

“I was not exposed to those things,” she said.

She described herself as feeling like the stereotypical sheltered homeschooler arriving in a much larger world for the first time.

Her experience does not mean that every homeschooled child will struggle socially or academically, just as attending public school does not guarantee strong preparation. But it does show what can happen when education becomes so isolated that a student reaches adulthood without enough exposure to the expectations and variety of the world outside the home.

Daniels Says Parents Need A Way To Measure Themselves

Daniels ended the video by returning to what he saw as the central problem.

He said many parents naturally believe they are doing a good job, but homeschooling can become dangerous when there is no outside benchmark showing whether the child is keeping up.

“I think it’s a lot of kids that are falling behind because they don’t have the support and every parent think that they doing a good job and they don’t have anything to measure themselves by,” he said.

That does not amount to an argument against homeschooling altogether. The mother who described co-ops, sports and regular activities showed how organized and socially active it can be when parents have the time and resources to build a full educational environment.

The former homeschooler showed the other side: a child can also emerge with serious gaps that become obvious only when college begins.

The strongest lesson from Daniels’ compilation is therefore not that public school is always better or that homeschooling inevitably fails. It is that removing a child from school creates a much larger responsibility for the parent, who must provide not only lessons at home but academic standards, outside feedback, social experiences, technology skills and preparation for a world the child will eventually have to enter independently.