—

[ShenanAnna]

No, I don’t think you’re being contrarian. I do think that you had an extraordinary outside-of-high-school life compared to mine.

I did come out of high school with a huge amount of knowledge, the Jeopardy! television quiz show kind, and school (1970 HS grad) was pretty much my life. Lived in a rural area, had neighborhood friends, my job at the mall, which was part-time during the school year and full-time during summers and Christmas, and the horses. That was it.

We were borderline poor and my parents ignored me (having three other kids right after me was part of that).

I did get to show, all local shows within about 30 miles. My parents’ only involvement was to arrange to go with a neighbor with a trailer. My father came, too, but I decided on the classes, signed up for and paid for them by myself, although he probably gave me the $2 or $3 per class it cost, got myself to the gate on time, and all else. My whole life has been a do-it-yourself experience, and the shows were no different.

So, I didn’t have the wonderfully rich teenaged years you seem to have, and going to a high school in a school system that we kept being told was one of the three best in the country (MIT came to my high school recruiting for students) was really a shining star in my existence. It didn’t shape my life skills, really, but it did give me the start in the right direction that kept me going and plenty of examples to show me what life would/should look like.

I do agree that OP’s parents are doing her a service with this exercise, and, hopefully, some of us in this thread have presented information, viewpoints, etc. that will sink in, now or in the future.

I don’t consider most of what I took away from my high-school years to be book-smartness, but general knowledge and ways of doing things and thinking about things that really applied to an awful lot.

[Virginia_Horse_Mom]

@HipNo34

ETA: calling my mom to ask about this and she said “are you sure that wasn’t Algebra II, you idiot?” No, no, in retrospect, I am not.

You are selling yourself short. I bet it was Algebra II . I’m with your mom on this.

I think that is the minimum requirement for most kids for high school graduation nation wide - to make it through Algebra II in high school.

[rothmpp]

I’m going to echo what most others have said here - I know it seems like we are a bunch of old meanies who do not want to help, but we have the advantage of experience and hindsight that is just not possible for most high school age teenagers.

It is just so very, very unlikely that you would be able to put away anywhere near the $50k that your parents have outlined as the number you need to contribute. You’d never be able to ride or do ANYTHING else for the next 5 months and you’d still fall horribly and depressingly short of your goal. Let me put it again in the terms others have - to make $20k in 5 months you’d have to make about $175 (to cover the taxes you’ll have to pay) a day EVERY SINGLE DAY for the next 5 months without a SINGLE day off. That’s $17.50 an hour for 10 hours a day. EVERY SINGLE DAY. More than double that amount for the $50k. And spent ZERO of that money on anything fun, including your horse or showing.

Also - the school saying they support any showing you might want to do - I’ll wager quite a bit of money that you’re footing the bill for any of this kind of showing. Do you have a reasonable grasp on just how much money it takes to qualify for finals? You’re very likely paying for entries, nomination fees, stabling, hotels, travel for any coaches coming with you, transportation for the horse, etc, etc, etc, When I was showing at a higher level and further afield than any of my barnmates - I had my own truck and trailer, and was self-sufficient enough to go without trainer support. For championships, I contracted with a clinician that I regularly rode with for one-off coaching at the show that she was already at with a big group of clients to cut down on my expenses. I would have had to foot the entire bill for my local trainer (lodging, food, day fee, etc…) if I brought her with me. So even though you want to show, could you realistically afford it?

You’ve said your parents are unwilling to let you even look for a working student position for even a short period of time. Why? I know several kids that absolutely excelled as a working student, taking their high school classes through a virtual school. Why are they willing to let you go to a boarding high school but not go work with a trainer. That alone tells me that they know you cannot possibly make the necessary money, but don’t want to be the bad guys who flat out tell you no. There are horror stories from WS arrangements, of course, but also many excellent programs. Same goes for elite prep schools. And you easily may find you hate a boarding school as much as your rural TX school, just for different reasons. You’re going to be very poor compared to most of your classmates and that gets old and potentially isolating very quickly.

You’d be much further ahead focusing on your mare, seeing if you can work at some of the local barns - even though they are not H/J barns - as hands on experience is never a bad thing, even if you learn how NOT to do things.

Academically, really look into supplementing your local school with either community college or online classes. Prove to your parents how hard you are willing to work. Graduate early and then get the WS/groom position that will get you much further to your goal to be a pro. Frankly, if you’re even a freshman, let alone a sophomore and have not yet had Alegbra 1? You’re behind on academics and probably would be overwhelmed by the workload and difficulty of the academics of a upper end boarding school. Those schools live and die by their Ivy League admission rate and your desire to do nothing but ride will fall to the side of making sure you’re keeping up academically.

That all being said - what does being a pro look like to you? What work would be your dream? It’s not all just big sticks Saturday night classes under the lights. That is actually a tiny percentage of H/J pros. I have a friend (in the dressage world) that did something similar to this - finished high school, did a couple years of college and then took a WS position in Ocala. She’s quite successful 10-15 years later (likely going to be short-listed for Paris), but she is INSANELY talented, and will be the first to tell you she also got VERY lucky. And has parents that could afford to support her chosen path until she could support herself.

[FjordBCRF]

I think the generational takes here are really interesting too. I was always TOLD how hard things would be…mostly from my schools themselves. In elementary school, junior high was going to be hard. Then high school was going to be “hard” and then college would even harder! In reality, I did not find this to be the case, and it colored my view of doing something like post secondary education at one of our local college branches. I wish I would have because I think my college experience was actually less intense than my high school classes and I could have started working sooner than I did. All this said, I was never a straight A brainiac or anything. I was a solid 3.2 - 3.5 GPA.

I don’t know when along the timeline schools started changing so much, maybe others can shed some more light there, but I have to imagine high in the 70’s was a different beast than when I was going. I know that school for kids now is night and day from when I was going too. At some point, teaching to standardized tests became a priority and it’s like we keep lowering expectations.

When I had my French exchange student, she was one of the top in ALL her classes, and we laughed extra hard that she got the best grade in her English class with it not being her first language. She ended up being pretty board with all her school work and did all her assignments with ease because of how much better the schools are she went to. I don’t think the American education is what is used to be. With that said, I really don’t know how it used to be before I was part of it!

[dogsbody1]

@clanter

Our youngest daughter while in high school did make $20k during summers conducting a beginner’s riding summer riding school. She used our horses at no cost as we leased them to her at $1 per head for each summer. She did the Whole thing herself, created the curriculum, hired a few school friends who also were horse wise. She had full sessions every time. She designed a school T Shirt for her students to wear and they had to wear that shirt every class, these became her primary advertising as the kids wore those shirts everywhere.

Even that is unrealistic for the average teenager whose parents don’t have a string of riding horses or facilities to lease for a nominal amount For anyone else, the overhead would be too high to yield much of a profit. Braiding seems like the most lucrative option with the lowest barrier to entry. Even then, OP needs a real windfall, not just “summer job” money.

[Rackonteur]

@Virginia_Horse_Mom

However, a lot of parents and teachers use the STEM acronym to talk about educational tracks and programs of study certain students take in high school, so that they are prepared to pursue a college degree in engineering, science, technology (such as computer science or data science) or mathematics.

That’s very different from how it was when i was in college. They wanted you to have a well-rounded “general” education so everyone took basically the same courses our freshman and sophomore years .Towards your junior year you started really concentrating on your major. I envied the students at Oxbridge who AFAIK got to concentrate on their subject from the start and didn’t have to take subjects for which they had no talent or academic need. I hated having to take unnecessary sciences (altho’ i actually enjoyed my one “Math for People Who Will Never Need to Do Math” course).
And I’ve needed algebra one whole time, and geometry never except when I’m designing barns and then i use lined paper lol.

[dogsbody1]

@kaya842

Not to derail too much here but curious if you could elaborate here? What sort of doors/ opportunities do you attribute specifically to going to that school?

Not the post you’re replying to, but speaking for myself as someone who went to a relatively fancy state school (UVA) after growing up under a rock in a southern Virginian backwater, it just changes your outlook and expectations in a way that’s hard to explain. For example, I didn’t know people could get internships that paid enough to support living in NYC or DC over the summer and result in a job offer before you even started your 4th year. It would never have occurred to me that those opportunities existed. I only knew about the internships that sent direct mail to my house, which required me to pay them. And I never would have heard of, let alone applied for, internships like that if it weren’t for meeting friends and classmates who were in the same “pipeline,” so to speak. And I seriously doubt I would have gotten interviews if those companies weren’t actively recruiting from UVA. My friends at other colleges just didn’t seem to have the same awareness or feel the same pressure. I remember talking to them about my job interviews, and many of them were perplexed why I would be trying to get hired before I had even graduated. They didn’t realize, at UVA, you were basically made to feel like a big loser if you didn’t have an offer before spring semester 4th year. Not that “feeling like a big loser” is a great life experience… and you do get a LOT of that at competitive schools. But it does motivate you and push you to go farther than you might if you simply weren’t aware of these opportunities that existed or the path to reach them. I certainly can’t say I loved my college experience, but I do credit it with jumpstarting my life and putting me on a very different trajectory than the one I was headed for.

[Foitin]

Just want to say as a parent and teacher of a different subject that taking algebra in 9th grade is not automatically a bad thing and can be just right for ALL kinds of students: of course having OPTIONS is the best, which seems to be the problem here! For what its worth, Sidwell Friends, where Obama’s kids went to middle and HS, still offers PRE-algebra for all 7th graders just like I had in 1992 at a Meh middle school on the west coast.

[Joanne]

@LilahEquestrian

She has a warmblood breeding farm in Ocala, and keeps her personal horses at the TX barn. She is super sweet and will help anyone with anything. I could ask her about something like that!

Just want to be sure that her first name isn’t Kate.

[BostonHJ]

OMG that would be the train wreck to end all COTH train wrecks…

[Virginia_Horse_Mom]

Just add in Nicky P as the resident trainer specializing in Klassikal Dressage, and Lala Pop Rider … who somehow found a reason to move herself, 5 horses and a laundry boy onto the property, and then refuses to leave.

THAT would the mother of all COTH train wrecks. A hat trick.

[hoopoe]

Grand Salami Time ( to quote the great Dave Niehaus)

but honestly Joanne, you might want to privately IM the OP if your spidey sense is aroused

[MHM]

Lol!!!

Omg. It could be a two-fer of braiding and breeding experience!

[dogsbody1]

@vxf111

@CBoylen

the school with what I would consider the “best” trainer of the bunch repeatedly warns that their program is not show-based

He really is the BEST.

Greg Best? I heard he retired from coaching though?

[Bristol_Bay]

I have a question that you may already have answered, but I may have missed it.

Could your parents afford to pay your tuition at this school if they wanted to?

[dogsbody1]

@LilahEquestrian

I mean I have been to very expensive horse stables and boarded there… one of the girls my age owned an entire private jet and I got along with her very well and we were friends. Of course not everyone is the same but the school told me I’d already be on the Varsity riding team, and only a select number of students get on to it. Already having an upper hand in riding can help you socially, whether or not I’m “the poorest person there”.

You mentioned higher up on the thread that a summer working student position isn’t an option because your parents work and couldn’t relocate for an opportunity like that. Just putting it out there that it would be far cheaper for them to put you up somewhere for a summer than to spend $75k on tuition. It wouldn’t be all that different from boarding school—just no school, and more emphasis on the aspects of the school you care about.

The only way I see this working is if you suspect this is just like “the gauntlet” your parents have thrown down to challenge you to demonstrate your commitment, and then they will foot the rest of the bill and the other bills you’re bound to rack up trying to board and show with the school. If that’s the case—and you know it really isn’t a question of if they can afford it, or if it’s a choice between this and financing your college education—then by all means, go for it. Earn as much as you can to put a dent in the tuition bill and impress the hell out of your parents. But if you’re really going to a school you can barely afford, it’s going to be a rough experience, and an unwise investment of your time, energy, and money.

[Scribbler]

No 13 year old owns a private jet. Or even a car. Or indeed, legally, owns a horse when you come down to it. Their parents do.

As the discussion progresses, I should add that my assumption has been that this school is not something that your parents can comfortably afford. In order to comfortably afford it, they basically have to be in the top 1 per cent, or close to it.

Obviously you shouldn’t be answering our nosy questions about your family’s total wealth. But I suspect you don’t even know yourself. I didn’t, at your age. My father was in sales, boom and bust. Sometimes there was money for anything and sometimes there wasn’t, but I never knew if that was because there really wasn’t money in the bank or if he was just anxious about spending savings in a dry spell. I don’t think he was the best about investing, and he definitely played mind control games with my mother, who definitely played mind control games with us kids. Our net worth and annual income was a mystery to me, and possibly to my mother. My father did get awards for top sales from his company which was a bit of a clue.

With my mother, I never knew if she didn’t approve of buying something or if she was just anxious about the bank balance or if she was just playing control games.

I got out of there and mostly paid my own way through university.

Anyhow, my point is that as a teenager you may not actually know what your parents can and can’t afford, and your parents may not want you to know for various reasons.

So the situation is a bit different if they can’t easily afford it versus if they can easily afford it but don’t think it’s a good idea. Neither makes it easy for you of course.

[trubandloki]

@LilahEquestrian, how much have you earned and saved in the last week during this discussion?

What have you done in the last week to show your parents how dedicated and hard working you are, how much you are willing to do to work for your desires/goals?

[fivestrideline]

@Scribbler

So the situation is a bit different if they can’t easily afford it versus if they can easily afford it but don’t think it’s a good idea

This is the key for OP, disregarding the topic drift.

If her parents just aren’t quite on board but are willing and able to pay for high school at this rate, then it may just be a matter of OP showing them how committed she is.

If her parents cannot afford such a school and just didn’t want to outright say that (or maybe OP didn’t hear “we can’t afford that” in the “you’ll have to pay for it yourself” conversation), then this is all moot anyway because she CANNOT pay for this herself, in any way.

It is impossible to raise that kind of cash that fast. It is unlikely her horse will sell for $50k, or whatever she ultimately needs to pay for all of HS. Moreso, if this is the same mare with the hind end issue over fences and the severe spooking/can’t canter a course without a counterbend problem, she’s not going to lease that horse out for $20k++, unless something has changed dramatically. (Separately, I do hope OP has overcome those problems with the mare and has a happy willing partner!).

[kaya842]

@IPEsq

Occasionally, depending on the program, they might get a ride on a school horse but that’s going to be more common at 3’ and under.

Just to add to this point - I can’t name any place or person that allows non-owners/non-leasees to jump horses above the 3’ mark. No riding academy’s, lesson barns, show barns, or even universities near me allow riders to take the lesson horses above 3’ (not even the University I attended that received Reed Kesslers older GP horse + 2 other 1.30m+ horses - all of the horses show at 1.0m or the 3’ mark).
The kids riding several horses at higher levels own/ lease the horses or work for the barn/ trainer, IME.

@dogsbody1

I only knew about the internships that sent direct mail to my house,

I appreciate the additional perspective! Can I ask roughly when you attended? I ask because the above about direct mail makes me wonder if your experience was different than that of more recent graduates (apologies if this is off base). I can totally see what you are saying about not knowing about this whole other world that exists outside of your (g) own bubble, especially when during the teen years. However, I think that is less (perhaps much less) an issue with the prevalence of social media. I have pretty much no love for social media, but have learned several things from it about other “worlds” that I would have never experienced in my regular (non internet) life. Add to that the accessibility of information if one goes looking, I don’t see as much of a need for a (in this case VERY expensive) school to teach things such as how to dress, interact professionally, etc. Disclaimer that not all info online is quality info but the counterpoint is that some is, such as much of the information here within the forums