Student Profile: Amelia Coleman

1. What makes your family unique to other families you know?

Like many other Seton families, ours is unique in the fact that we have nine homeschooled children.

We also travel to New Mexico, where my Dad is from, to visit family at least once a year. We used to fly, but as our family keeps growing we switched to driving our fifteen passenger van.

We like to take new routes to see different scenery. Our labradoodle, Reina, comes with us and lies on the floorboards between the seats!

Once we even brought a kitten back, and I held it on my lap almost the entire two thousand miles back to our home in Wisconsin. In New Mexico, we spend time with our grandparents and visit my grandma’s racehorse farm. We enjoy a lot of Mexican food, especially tamales and enchiladas.

2. What is an average homeschooling day with Seton like for you?

I am an early bird, and I thrive on checklists and schedules.

First, I wake up and bike to 6:30am Mass. Next, I work out and shower. Then my family leaves for a later Mass, and I enjoy an hour of quiet. I usually attack my schoolwork for the day at this time. When my family comes home, we eat breakfast together and I do more school. Sometimes I bike to the library for a few hours. The time I finish my work always varies.

After school, I like to go outside and shoot baskets with my brothers or by myself. In the winter, I sometimes go to the YMCA. Otherwise, I read, write, take pictures, or draw.

3. What’s something you have done that you really enjoyed doing?

Two springs ago, I was able to go with my grandparents to Krakow, Poland for my uncle’s ordination. I love to travel, and it was my first time being out of the country. My uncle showed us around all week and we saw some amazing things. We even went by train to Warsaw and by bus to the concentration camp in Auschwitz.

We got around Krakow on foot or by tram. I heard new types of music and saw beautiful churches, including buildings once inhabited by St. Faustina, St. John Paul II, and the prison cell of St. Maximillian Kolbe. I tried tons of new foods, all of which were delicious. It was a thrilling experience!

4. What are your hobbies and interests?

I have so many hobbies and interests it’d be hard to put them all down…I’m interested in almost everything!

I have always loved animals, especially cats. I also love the world, traveling, new places, languages, and cultures. Geography has always been my favorite school subject. English literature is another favorite of mine.

I love to read and write fiction and poetry. My favorite author (perhaps not-surprisingly) is J.R.R. Tolkien, and I am a Lord of the Rings fanatic.

Also, I really enjoy drawing, painting, photography, and playing the piano and ukulele.

Finally, I love nature and spending time outside. Some of my favorite things to do are play sports, hunt, camp, hike, ski, learn about wilderness survival, and do rock climbing and archery.

5. What are some things you do as a family and on your own that you particularly enjoy?

My family loves sports. We have all played many different sports through the local Catholic schools or rec departments.

My favorite sport is basketball, but I have also played several years of and loved softball, soccer, track and field, volleyball, and once even football. We play together in the yard all of the time, and attend each others’ games.

We like to keep each others’ personal stats. My dad coaches my brothers in baseball, and they usually have very successful seasons. In March, we always fill out the March Madness brackets with extended family.

Also, the football season is taken very seriously in our family, and we each have our own favorite team. Every year we see a Brewer’s baseball game, and occasionally we go up to Lambeau Field for a Packers’ football game.

My brothers and I love to hunt, and we’ve gone every winter for the last two years with our uncles and dad. Last hunting season, I shot and killed my first buck with one perfect shot!

6. What do you hope to do in the future?

After college, I’d love to have a family and run a photography studio. I’d write and illustrate books for children and young adults in my spare time, hoping by my contributions to bring the media, and the young people effected by it, little by little back to God.

Otherwise, I’d be interested in becoming a nurse, most likely a birth and labor nurse. It is a dream of mine (but probably not a realistic one) to become a photojournalist or wildlife photographer for National Geographic, and I’d also love to try lay missionary work for a year or two.

I am so excited to go out into the world. I feel that with a good education and a wide scope of imagination and interests, the future is waiting for me!