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What are the pros and cons of homeschooling for you?

I'm able to make my own schedule every single day. I choose what things I want to work on in the morning and in the evening. I'm able to really capitalize on a full 16-hour day, because I typically wake up at 8:30 and sleep at 12:30. Being able to work through that was definitely a pro. Being able to choose my own courses was another big pro. A lot of people at my local high school couldn't take AP courses or other high-level courses until their 11th or 12th grade, while I was taking my AP courses starting from 9th grade. Obviously, socializing is a con. It just comes with the territory of being a homeschooler. I was lucky in a sense, because I had a lot of friends outside of homeschooling in my neighborhood. I was able to see them pretty often throughout homeschooling. I found a lot of people through Pennsylvania Homeschoolers and Stanford Online High School where I made really good friendships that continue to this day.

What was your favorite subject that you've taken while homeschooling?

I would probably say math, but I'll give one for every year of high school because I can't choose one. Ninth grade was probably my AP US History course, because even though there were a lot of things to do, it kept the class engaging. Every Thursday, I had to do a set of multiple-choice questions and explain each of the answers. That kept me sharper about those topics. Learning about history and being able to write about history was certainly exciting for me. 10th grade would probably be my AP Government course. (I'm not just going to pick AP Homeschoolers, by the way.) AP Gov was good, especially because that was the time of the midterm elections. Being able to apply what I was learning in news stories was very exciting for me: to be able to double down and really understand how the government works at every single level. For 11th grade, I have two courses. One of them is my AP Physics C course. It was probably the hardest course I took in high school. I remember spending several hours a day working on Physics C problems and homework. It was very fulfilling in the end. My data science course was also very, very fun. I took that through Stanford. That gave me an introduction to machine learning as well as computer science. I'm planning to review the textbook as I go into my first year of college, as a refresher about everything that I learned. And then last year, AP Literature was another fun course to take. Being able to write about literature and characters was not the easiest at times, but definitely something that I look at with a lot of nostalgia in hindsight. Keeping the theme from 11th grade, I took a data structures course in 12th grade. My professor was a Stanford graduate, and I plan to ask him about a lot of different things as I go into Stanford.

How do you feel about going to Stanford University?

I go in two days to officially begin Stanford orientation. It's definitely weird leaving home, but everyone's got to at some point in their life, and what better time than now?

What are you studying?

I wish I knew the answer to that question. I would say probably computer science. I might do policy. I might do something with data science. I'm figuring it out right now, but I'll give it some time to marinate.

You run the organization Teens for Vaccines. Could you tell us about that?

Teens in Vaccines was founded in 2019 when I was 12. The mission of the organization was to educate and empower teens about the life-saving power of vaccines. We have around 60 ambassadors in America and some abroad. During the past four years, we've influenced legislation, we've helped teens online on social media, helped engage in research related to vaccines. It's a very multifaceted and interdisciplinary approach to the complicated topic. I testified at the California Assembly for a bill about HPV-related cancers. I remember that whole process, because on the way there, I was doing biology practice questions, and when I was in the office of the assemblywoman, I was still doing those problems. It was very interesting to have a double life of being a high schooler and being an advocate at the same time. Running Teens for Vaccines taught me so much about leadership, how to be a team leader at one of the higher levels, and managing harassment. We've had to go up against harassment, and it's never been fun to read, but when people are trying to knock you off your path, you know you’re doing something right.

What inspired you to start the organization?

I remember I was on YouTube in March 2019. I was just scrolling, and I saw a teen, Ethan Lindenberger, testify in front of Congress about how his mom was influenced by these anti-vaccine echo chambers on Facebook to deny him the MMR vaccine. He decided to get the vaccine, against the wishes of his mom, after he really did some research about the vaccine and realized that what his mom was saying was incorrect. I was shocked by this because I was thinking, wait, people don't like vaccines? I've learned since first grade about how they're one of the greatest medical advances of our generation. And then I looked further, and I found that people are really getting hurt by this. I went to New York that summer for a camp, and I did some research about the anti-vaccine movement and its history. This is around the time where there was a measles outbreak in the neighbouring Rockland County, which had a large population who didn't believe in vaccines. So several different areas of the country had these hot pockets, and now I was in New York, where I was seeing the same thing. The pandemic accelerated things. I was trying to find people to join my organization in October 2019, and everyone I talked to was more focused on other issues. But with COVID accelerating things and pushing things to another level, anti-vaccine sentiment against the COVID vaccine was at a fever pitch. That's when things really started to roll.

What are your day-to-day responsibilities with running Teens for Vaccines?

It's been tricky over the past year because a lot of things in my life have changed. I got into college, and navigating my second semester was very tricky. I'm still figuring out what I really want to do. Some of my daily responsibilities are just checking in with ambassadors and following up on projects. It's really more of an overseeing role. In terms of events, we've done town halls in different locations with doctors, with legislators, with a lot of teens from different backgrounds. We’ve done these particularly over Zoom and during COVID time. Recently, I attended a conference hosted by the Society of Adults and Health to present on a paper that I contributed to about parenting vaccine decision-making. Right now, while we aren’t the most active, we're looking to rebound and really get the ball rolling again.

What has been your biggest challenge so far?

Where do I begin? I'll name three different challenges. The first challenge was getting people to join the organization. But when COVID started, there were eyes on diseases and more eyes on vaccine-related science. Very suddenly, I got a lot of people to join Teens for Vaccines. The second challenge was harassment. I remember I got a very horrible email from a fake alternate account. I'm not going to repeat what it said here. But, I guess, you develop some mental strength against these things. If someone is taking the time out of their day to harass a 14-year-old, who's really losing? The last challenge is managing everything right. Having a dual life as a student and an advocate is never easy, but homeschooling helped so much with that. I'm able to be the advocate at times in the day that I wouldn't have been able to if I went to a brick-and-mortar school. So homeschooling was an investment for me, and I can't speak on it enough. 

What has been your biggest success? 

Helping people. As cliche as that sounds, talking to people online, hosting town halls, educating people about vaccines… I remember I got a message from a student in Australia two years ago where she said, ‘Hey, as a result of your advice, I was able to convince my parents to let me get the HPV vaccine.’ Things like that really remind me of why I started the organization. Even if it's one person, you still changed a life and you still made someone safer in the long run. Those kinds of things, I think, are the biggest successes. 

What are your plans for the future?

I wish I had a solid answer for you. Right now, my plan is to really reactivate Teens for Vaccines at our old pace. It is summer, and people have their own things they want to do. But I definitely want to keep going along. For now, with college and everything coming up, I can't say confidently what's going to happen. But I definitely want to continue Teens for Vaccines and just let things unfold.

You can learn more about Teens for Vaccines and the fight for teenage vaccination at teensforvaccines.org.

Luisa Ensslin is editor-in-chief of PAH! and a Grade 12 student in Canada. She loves all things writing, be they newspaper articles, novels, checklists, or reading things that talented people have written.