Audry's guest post: The School-Slider

For my final guest post of the month, publishing the day before I get home (!), the fabulous writer, blogger, Twitterer, and all-around great person Audry writes about her experiences as a military brat.  You can find her blog at http://talshannon.livejournal.com, or follow her on Twitter (where she tweets tons of great stuff!) @AudryT.  PLEASE finish your book, Audry, because I love your writing! =D And with that, take it away!

Military brats tend to have strange educations.  We slide from school
to school, not because of our performance or our parents’ desire to
find the perfect education, but because our family must go where the
job goes – and military jobs don’t like standing still.  We sometimes
start Kindergarten in Texas, survive Middle School in Germany, suffer
through High School in some remote posting in Alaska, and find
ourselves graduating on a beach in Southern California.

Along the way, we tend to miss about half the usual books assigned to
almost every kid for reading (Old Yeller, The Old Man and the Sea, The
Red Badge of Courage, and so on), because every school district is on
a different reading schedule.

We also tend to miss entire subjects, as I missed the essential
grammar education that most kids get from public high school between
grades 6-8.  Sometimes this is due to just moving around too damn much
in the middle of the school year (military parents get relocated at
all times of the year, not just during summer break).  Other times,
it’s because not every place you live can provide you with a quality –
or even basic - education.  (I’ve gone from some of the best school
districts in the U.S. to some of the worst literally overnight.)

Your average Army brat moves once every eight years.  As the Navy brat
of a much sought-after computer expert, I moved every two.  When
people ask me where I went to school, my reply is:  “Osaka, Japan;
Monterey, California; Provo, Utah; Ft. Mead, Maryland; Oahu, Hawai’i;
and Westminster, Maryland.”  Then I pause to count them, to make sure
I didn’t miss any.

People think it’s exciting to see so many different places.  It isn’t
when you’re trying to fit in with the locals and don’t know the rules
of any of their cliques, or when you’re bored stiff in a class you
took last semester halfway across the world, or when you can’t
motivate yourself to finish your homework because you know your dad’s
getting transferred again in two weeks and you’ll never see your
teacher again.  You spend most of your time living on a military base,
your social life restricted to other displaced kids within walking
distance - few of whom are your own age – and when one or both of your
parents is on duty, you end up having to do your homework alone, even
if the assignment requires parental interaction.  Military parents
can’t rearrange their schedules for the good of their kids, no matter
how much they might want to.

Sliding from one school to another isn’t all misery and angst,
however.  I remember seeing beautiful, hand-sculpted ice floats in the
winter festivals of Japan, and learning how to speak Japanese because
I was surrounded by it, rather than from a dull textbook.  I learned
to walk among the magnificent and ancient buildings of Tehran, and
discovered the history of America by visiting the massive monuments of
Washington, D.C.  I self-taught myself better grammar skills than most
public educations provide because everywhere we moved, there were
books, and no matter what our living circumstances, I could always
read a book or pick up a pen and write a story.  My social skills
suffered from constant moving, but my ability to adapt to any
circumstance, and to rapidly absorb the rules of any culture, has
become one of my greatest assets as an adult.  I saw a thousand sights
the average child never sees in school, and learned a thousand ways of
living that allowed me to see just how vast and astonishing our great
world is.

As challenging as it was to be a military brat with an interrupted
education, I have to say in looking back, that I’m not sure I’d give
it up for a more stable one, if that also meant giving up the myriad
universes of humanity I got to experience first-hand.

Thank you for the post, Audry, and I'll see you all tomorrow!  Or the day after that, depending on how totally exhausted I am.  A huge thank you to everyone who so generously wrote posts for me, you rock, 'nuff said! =D