When Will joined PLC in the middle of 8th grade, it was supposed to be temporary, just a short term experiment. Instead, he found a community where he could follow his interests and truly be himself. In his story, Will shares how PLC helped him build confidence, discover a love of hands-on engineering projects, form lasting friendships, and rediscover the joy of learning.

In Will’s Own Words:

Before I came to Princeton Learning Cooperative, I went through the public and private school system. As you may know, they’re not really built for neurodivergent kids. I am diagnosed with ADHD, so it wasn’t a great fit. Some things were good, but some weren’t, especially socially. It got to the point where I would have days where I just could not bring myself to go to school.

I generally like to learn things, but I felt like “traditional” school wasn’t the right environment for me to do so. So in the middle of 8th grade, I left the school I was in and joined PLC. It was originally an experiment. The plan was that I would go there for 6 months, then move on to Princeton High school. However, I ended up loving Princeton Learning Cooperative, so I stayed.

I genuinely felt like I didn’t have to pretend to be someone I wasn’t in order to fit in because the community was just so welcoming. Because of that, I’m friends with pretty much everyone here, but I also became part of a really close group of friends. The mentors are super nice, especially Heather. I’m biased since she’s my mentor, but still.

I use my time at PLC mainly to get my work done, but I also have a decent amount of time to hang out with my friends and socialize. For schoolwork, I’ve worked with my parents and mentors to make sure I fulfill all the requirements to go to a 4-year university. I do some classes online and some at PLC. For my online classes, I use Art of Problem Solving for math, Thinkwell for honors biology, and G3 for history and English, which is an online program tailored specifically to homeschoolers. At PLC, the main classes I take are House Band, Video Production, and Spanish, but there’s some others I take just because they interest me.

Since PLC doesn’t give me a lot of homework, I have a lot of time to focus on my extracurriculars, such as guitar and Brazilian jiu jitsu. I also have enough time to focus on any projects I’m interested in. The most recent project I worked on was building my own digital night vision. At a traditional school, I’d be too swamped with homework to have any time to focus on a project as involved at that.

I intend to go to college after PLC. I plan on majoring in mechanical engineering, so I can fulfill my aspirations of becoming a practical effects engineer. Practical effects engineers are the people who do all the physical effects in a movie, like explosions, launch systems for jumping scenes, prosthetics, et cetera. PLC gave me the opportunity to do the things I enjoy, which has really helped clarify what I plan to do in the future.

–Will, 2026