u/lettuce_ishealthy

Quick summary of what brought me to this decision so young, since I know most people on this sub are adults going back and finishing their high-school education after having dropped out or otherwise not receiving a diploma at the usual age: I'm generally a high-performing student, struggled a bit in 8th grade due to disliking some of my teachers, biting off more than I could chew with accelerated classes, and starting to question the structure of the American schooling system. Homeschooled for 9th grade, the incremental learning structure is killing me and I'd much rather just study the core most important topics and pass four tests to prove I'm smart enough to move onto learning about what I'm actually passionate about. I draw, write, am currently trying to learn to animate, and I could spend more time honing the skills I enjoy​ if I didn't have K-12 schooling on my plate. For context, my mom is supportive about this and we've been thinking about it for a few months (dad is technically in the picture, but split custody so he doesn't really get a say in this; I don't have a good relationship with him and my mom has primary custody).

Subject confidence levels:

English - I'm very confident about ELA/RLA; the last standardized test I took in 8th placed me at 12+ (higher than 12th grade reading & writing level). And I've been consistently writing since then for my own personal projects, so I should be good for English. My only concern is I might've picked up some weird grammar habits since I haven't gotten feedback from adults in a while. There are some that I'm aware of, like placing punctuation after quotation marks instead of inside them when it isnt meant to be part of the quote, and using apostrophes instead of quotations when putting somehing in 'quotes' that I'm not actually citing from a source. I make up writing rules for myself, because there's some rules that I think are stupid. But I'll know to correct those when taking the test, and any I'm not aware of I'll correct after the practice test. I'll probably end up doing the ELA practice without studying first, and scheduling the test right after if all goes well. My ELA study is my everyday creative writing process lolol.

History - I was worried about this one for a while, but my brother (who's completed his GED a year after dropping out of senior year) told me It's basically just reading comprehension. Like, if you can remember what you JUST read from a passage, you can get the question right. So now I'm less worried. Still a little nervous though, because I have ADHD and I tend to read without really READING sometimes if the topic doesn't interest me. So I'm a little worried I'll start doing that and have to reread it, and I know it's a timed test so that could be costly. I'm hopeful that the stakes will keep me in check, though.

Science - I took a college-level homeschool biology course ​in place of 9th grade biology, and honestly I don't really get how it was college-level lol. But I'm probably lacking in a lot of the chemistry knowledge, plus I've heard it's a lot of math and higher-level math just makes my eyes roll into the back of my head, sooo.. But I'm optimistic that I'll be able to learn what I need to without too much struggle, at least for the Science portion.

Math - I took an advanced/accelerated math class in 7th & 8th grade, which covered me all the way up to Algebra 1. And I took Geometry for homeschool 9th, so I should be set except for 11th & 12th grade topics. Ngl though, I was struggling in math in the 2nd semester of 8th grade, partly because it was difficult for me and partly because I really disliked my math teacher that year. She was a bit condescending, and expected too much of us (imo). This is the one subject that makes me doubt myself sometimes, that maybe I'm not really built for the Early Graduate path. But, even so, if I can pass my GED on all the other subjects, then I'll just have to homeschool for math at my own pace until I'm finished, which would likely also be faster than the traditional schooling path. Just not as fast as I'm currently hoping.

Overall, a lot of my teachers would call me smart, and I was usually among teachers' either favorite or best performing students. Except for History & Math in 8th grade (my 8th History teacher is also someone I didn't get along with, to my recollection I got at least B's in her class though). I do think I'm pretty smart, but I get lazy sometimes.

Weaknesses:

-Slow reader & writer. I'm good at it, but it takes me a little longer than normal. I'd say I'm 0.6 the reading speed of an average person.

-Math. I can do what I've learned when I put my mind to it and focus, but just the sheer look of some of those equations makes me want to put my head down and wait until class time runs out.

-Topics I'm not interested by. Like I said, I get bitter and start to question why it matters---why specifically I need to do this, when it won't be important to specifically my ideal adult life. Like I also said though, I think the less incremental learning structure will help me out a ton with this struggle. Maybe it doesn't matter, but if I perform well it's almost ​over, so who cares?

I'm not gonna list my strengths, I already covered that enough I think.

My main questions:

1. Are the tests able to be taken online? I thought for sure they were, but it seems like in some areas it might be required to take them in-person. They obviously have to oversee you, but when my brother did it, he said they were just watching his screen via something similar to screensharing.​ If it really is required I can take it in-person, It's not too big a deal.

2. About how long do you think getting my GED would take me? I'm worried that, having only schooled up to 9th grade, I'll be very behind on a lot of the knowledge I need. I'm not too worried about learning it once I know what I need to study, but I'm a little worried about how long it'll take me to catch up. With adults who've gone through high school but didn't graduate, it feels like ya'll's studying is more of a ​refresher, whereas I'd be learning a lot of it for the first time. It took my brother I think 3 months, and he said he was pretty lazy about it, but I've seen some people on here say they finished in a week. I'm kind of hoping for 1-1.5 months total, but I think that might be a stretch.

3. For how many attempts is the test free, and how many times can you take the practice test?

4. Best/most concise/fastest studying resources? Lurking around here for the past couple days, so far I've picked up GetSumMath (I might be wrong on the exact name of that) and Onesego.

5. Should I take the practice tests immediately once I'm 16 and work from there, or study first? English not included, genuinely I'm almost certain I could take the test right now and get like a 165-180. I'll definitely take the practice beforehand though.

6. Testing strategies? I haven't taken any SATs or ACTs so I'm kind of out of the loop on this. What sort of questions to either entirely skip or skip and come back to later, any mental workarounds for tricky wordings of questions, is it better to guess before skipping or to leave it blank?

Also sorry if I gave too much information and made this post longer than necessary. I just wanted to give the fullest possible picture of what I'm confident and nervous about in relation to each topic, so that the advice given can be as relevant/accurate as possible. But I'll answer any clarifying questions in the comments if anybody needs more details. And any additional tips are very welcome, I'm uninformed enough about GEDs that there's probably some questions I wouldn't even know to ask lol.

Edit: I forgot to mention, 16 is the youngest age you're eligible to take a GED course, practice tests, or real tests, so that's why I need to wait until I'm 16. I may start studying up beforehand if I'm allowed to though.

I want to cut up some clips from the Fears to Fathom: Scratch Creek vod and make a little animatic to it, because that stream was SO goddamn funny, I'm so glad I was actually there to watch it live for once. but idk how to scrape the audio without paying for the Downloads feature only included in the premium version of YouTube. To download songs for free I typically just go to whatever sketchy website and deal with the sus pop-up ads until I get the audio I need, but I doubt the audio from some random guy's stream is available anywhere else than where he himself has posted it, so I kinda figure my only option is downloading the vod and then pulling just the audio from it somehow. But I can't and won't pay for premium, so, help?

​And do ya'll think he'd be okay with something like this? 😞 To my understanding, he doesn't actively encourage pirating because it's probably pretty sketchy territory if he's allowed to or not, but on an internal level, would this disappoint him or make him upset? He strikes me as the kind of guy who'd probably just look the other way and not mess with it if he found out. I haven't been a fan of him for too long, but I don't want to misuse anybody's content or pull the rug out from under him or something. Does obtaining the audio dubiously instead of the paid way hurt him financially or analytically in any way?

Also, free editing software reccomendations that don't use or advertise AI? I've been using FlipaClip for animatics so far and oml I'm so done with it get me OUT. But that wouldn't work for editing down the clips anyway, so. I was looking into Alight Motion, but it seems kind of unusable due to the sheer obnoxiousness of the ads. I'm just looking for something free that lets me edit stuff down and then export the product into a different program.​

PS: don't kill me for the post flair please, I'm still pretty new to posting on here and idk how tf those things work. "Question" seemed a little too non-specific for this, idk.​

Idk if it's called a badge, it's a 1-3 word long thing that shows up below someone's username in comment sections, and is highlighted by a rectangle with rounded corners in varying color. Seems self-written, I wanna know so I can make my own if the criteria is just joining. Please let me know if there's any restrictions on that for new users :)

So I made this account about two weeks ago and have been commenting on other posts to get to a number where I'll be able to do anything I'll reasonably want to on here.​ But about what number is that? When should I stop worrying about growing it and just post/comment freely?