Tirzah's NSA Story — NorthStar Navigator

by Tirzah Hopkins

My name is Tirzah Hopkins. I live in southern Indiana with my parents, grandparents, and eight of my eleven siblings. I’m the fifth of twelve kids. I like to write novels, play the guitar, and hang out with my family and friends. I work at an awesome place called Country Lake Christian Retreat. I also do martial arts.

Everyone has a unique NSA story. Some are probably more interesting than others. Mine isn’t anything too spectacular. We’ve always homeschooled. We used lots of different and programs like Math-U-See, All-In-One Homeschool, Khan Academy, Monarch, Sonlight, educational apps, documentaries, and just reading in general.

How we came to NSA, though, doesn’t have to do with any of that. My sister wanted to go to the naval academy, so my dad was trying to find some good accredited learning that would allow her to do that. She saw that one of NorthStar Academy’s graduates had gone to the naval academy. He also saw that it was fully accredited. And then, he saw that it was Christian. He wanted the rest of us kids to get accredited and quality learning, and he thought that having real teachers would be good for us, too. So we older kids joined NorthStar.

I joined about two and a half years ago, back when good ol’ FirstClass was in use (sorry, Teams, you’re just not the same). I worked about half a semester as the librarian’s intern before the library program was discontinued. I tried to do things like the Mage’s Guild and NaAT, but it was kind of hard to be a part of things when I was used to the online version of FirstClass. I also found two hidden folders, one I can’t remember the name of and the other one was the Leaky Barrel. I tried to start the NorthStar Academy Military. I’m still kind of trying to, but it sort of fell through and the group chat we’re using is mostly just chat now.

But NorthStar has been great this whole time. I wasn’t very used to deadlines, so last semester was kind of panicky, but I pulled through. I started my next semester of classes in the middle of the semester and wrapped up almost all of them at the end of May. I couldn’t have done that without Covid-19, so that was one good thing that came out of quarantine. And thanks to NorthStar, my schoolwork never changed and it gave me something to do during the months of lockdown.

I’m so glad my dad had us start doing NorthStar Academy. I’ve made a couple of pretty good friends here, and joining the NorthStar Navigator team was definitely a highlight of my school year.

So, that’s my NSA story. It isn’t very fascinating, but it’s unique, just like yours! Everyone has an NSA story. Make sure to tell it.