Homeschooling When You're Hardly Ever Home...

One might wonder how Haley possibly finds any time for school with all her musical travels. One key is online schooling. For the past year and a half, Haley has been doing dual enrollment courses online through the local community college. She started when we were in New Jersey and has continued this past semester by transferring to the local community college here in North Carolina. (One benefit of moving to NC was free dual enrollment for high school students.)

After a busy summer of travel, including another year of Studio2Stage this time as a member of the staff, Haley spent two weeks at the end of September touring down the west coast from Seattle, WA to Tucson, AZ with accordion master, John Whelan.  The key for Haley in getting schoolwork completed on time is working hard and getting ahead in her subjects prior to leaving home. This is easier to do in subjects where the professor keeps all weeks open rather than opening the course week by week. She was helped a bit by Hurricane Florence. The hurricane came through our area the weekend before we were due to fly out to Seattle and caused us to be evacuated and shut the college down for three weeks. Haley had planned to get ahead on schoolwork before the tour but with everything pushed back three weeks, she was even more ahead than she originally planned. During the tour, days were spent on the road traveling from one town to another and nights were spent performing. Haley did school in the car using her phone as a hot spot and any time off was for  school work.

We spent a few days at home following the tour then traveled to Midlothian, TX for O'Flaherty's Irish Music Retreat. Haley was invited to attend. She performed in a couple concerts and played music for the dancers at the ceili. Again, school was fit in whenever she had a free moment though there weren't many free moments between classes, workshops, rehearsals, meals, and performances.

We flew from Texas to Boston, MA then from there to Ireland. Between flights and on planes, she worked on her subjects. She downloaded chapters of textbooks prior to boarding planes so she could read and take notes then did any online quizzes or writing whenever she could fit it in. She had a bit more down time in Ireland because she didn't have any gigs.

We never really adjusted to the time difference...just slept until late morning then stayed up until the wee hours at sessions most nights. We visited friends, ate some delicious vegan food, Haley played lots of music, and we did some touring of Belfast, including the Titanic Museum.

Haley took 1st at the Fiddler of Dooney Competition competing in the senior age group, the first American to do so in 50 years! The local news did a nice story on her (link here) and had her come in to play a bit for the morning show.

After Ireland, Haley spent two days recording with her Shared Madness trio for a CD project they have in the works then we had a quick trip to New York City where she was invited to perform at the Irish Arts Center by Bill Whelan. She had a long day of rehearsals/creating the program then two nights of  shows. After the rehearsal day, we were supposed to drive to White Plains to spend the night with her fiddle mentor but an unexpected snow storm caused huge travel delays, accidents, and fallen trees all over the city. We got stuck in the city for the night but the Irish Arts Center staff were fabulous finding us a place to stay. Haley had a blast working with the other talented musicians and even went out on their one morning off to play more tunes with Alan and his friend. I think she never gets enough of Irish music.

After NYC, we've had time at home for the holidays. We spent Thanksgiving with the Richardson clan then took a quick trip to NJ to see the boys. Haley spent her weeks writing term papers, taking exams, and finished up the last of her fall semester courses today.

She's registered for next semester but looking forward to a few weeks to have time to work on her writing, learn her new classical assignments, do some drawing, and get ahead on her vegan blog (www.theversatilevegans.com)