Kendall Hailey

February 5, 2013 5:43 PM

Whatever Happened to Kendall Hailey? At age 16, Kendall Hailey decided she'd had enough of formal schooling, and became an autodidact. She wrote about her experience in her charming memoir entitled The Day I Became an Autodidact and the Advice, Adventures, and Acrimonies that Befell Me Thereafter. After that, she pretty much fell out of the public eye. In December 2012, Jennifer Paull of BookRiot tracked her down and asked her about her past, present, and future, and whether she'd recommend her own child follow her path (and whatever became of Matthew). Part 1. Part 2.

(There's also this audio interview with Kendall from 1988, but either it's no longer available or I'm having RealPlayer issues.)

posted by schoolgirl report (59 comments total)

Oh wow, totally read this book in high school. Can't wait to read the updates. Thanks!
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 6:05 PM on February 5, 2013

It's so easy to get by when you don't have to worry about supporting yourself!
posted by ReeMonster at 6:07 PM on February 5, 2013 [11 favorites]

So she became the smartest, best read part time employee at the toy store?
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:08 PM on February 5, 2013 [3 favorites]

Grumps, the lot of you!
posted by leotrotsky at 6:15 PM on February 5, 2013 [2 favorites]

I was an autodidact. I also completed formal schooling. What's the problem?
posted by sonic meat machine at 6:18 PM on February 5, 2013 [2 favorites]

posted by schoolgirl report

antiponysterical.
posted by progosk at 6:23 PM on February 5, 2013 [9 favorites]

Thanks for sharing. As a parent of two autodidacts that never attended school K-12, that was interesting.
posted by COD at 6:25 PM on February 5, 2013

Tough room tonight.
posted by schoolgirl report at 6:30 PM on February 5, 2013 [9 favorites]

I think she was sort of led astray by the success of the first book, which was a stunt ( not to her, but certainly for the publishing house). Why not go to college--she and her husband live in LA, which isn't exactly a higher ed wasteland?
posted by Ideefixe at 6:42 PM on February 5, 2013

So she became the smartest, best read part time employee at the toy store?

Sounds like a dream job. Play for a few hours a day, then have the rest of the day for reading and learning more.

Jobs aren't life. They are to keep you alive.
posted by DU at 6:43 PM on February 5, 2013 [40 favorites]

One of my all-time favorite memoirs. Nice to have an update.
posted by Lipstick Thespian at 6:49 PM on February 5, 2013

I was an autodidact. I also completed formal schooling. What's the problem?

So did she - she just took an early-graduation option and then avoided college. That often got lost in the shuffle at the time because this book was so popular among homeschoolers (there was a lack of real homeschooler memoirs at the time).

The Colfaxes - the other big memoirists of the same period - never really disappeared as much. Three of their 4 sons were the first "modern" lifelong homeschoolers admitted to Harvard (they were famously derided as 'goat boys' for having been homeschooled on a farm), and their parents wrote two popular books. Grant Colfax is now the Director of the Office of National AIDS policy, so they're back in the public eye, a bit.
posted by Wylla at 6:58 PM on February 5, 2013 [4 favorites]

So she became the smartest, best read part time employee at the toy store?
posted by DirtyOldTown
Maybe, maybe not, there's a lot of Ph.D's working jobs like that.
posted by 445supermag at 7:01 PM on February 5, 2013 [5 favorites]

Her book of essays sounds fun. I'd read it.
posted by not that girl at 7:11 PM on February 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

Maybe, maybe not, there's a lot of Ph.D's working jobs like that.

Indeed, college towns are full of them, especially the really fun college towns. Universities don't like to admit that they willingly churn out tons of graduates with advanced degrees in fields that have limited job prospects, but that is another topic...
posted by the_grizz at 7:36 PM on February 5, 2013

From the one-star review on Amazon:

"At the time of its original publication, the author hit the circuit hard, doing all kinds of press where her incredible, Hepburnesque mannered way of speaking(has to be heard to be believed)was more interesting than anything she had to say..."

Darn it, no relevant clips seem to have made it onto YouTube.
posted by O Blitiri at 7:46 PM on February 5, 2013

Jobs aren't life. They are to keep you alive.

And your kids alive. And to keep you stimulated and engaged, if you have the combination of skill, ambition, and luck to find something like that.

What, exactly, did she do with her life? I remember growing up with a lot of intellectual energy and being told from an early age you need to contribute. She was raised with all the privilege in the world, and she was clearly extraordinarily talented and had the discipline to teach herself so much stuff on her own. Then what happened?
posted by deanc at 7:52 PM on February 5, 2013 [9 favorites]

O Blitiri: "Darn it, no relevant clips seem to have made it onto YouTube."

You're in luck: Kendall Hailey interview, 1988 March.
posted by dd42 at 7:53 PM on February 5, 2013 [3 favorites]

She sounds completely charming.
posted by vitabellosi at 7:57 PM on February 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

So she became the smartest, best read part time employee at the toy store?

I don't understand the sentiment behind this. "Serves her right for valuing education over practicalities!"? "Good thing we live in a society that values grades over education!"? The mind boggles.
posted by wayland at 8:19 PM on February 5, 2013 [7 favorites]

I can't watch the video right now, so can someone tell me: Katharine or Audrey?
posted by mr_roboto at 8:24 PM on February 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

Then what happened?

Perhaps she started living for herself rather than other people's expectations. It happens.
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:24 PM on February 5, 2013 [24 favorites]

I can't watch the video right now, so can someone tell me: Katharine or Audrey?

Katharine!
posted by Jahaza at 8:31 PM on February 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

You're in luck: Kendall Hailey interview, 1988 March.

Huh. She is very strange sounding (her manner of speaking is one that I associate with old, quirky SF people).
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 8:31 PM on February 5, 2013 [2 favorites]

Why not go to college--she and her husband live in LA, which isn't exactly a higher ed wasteland?posted by Ideefixe at 6:42 PM on February 5 [+] [!]

I can't speak for her, but some of us just really, really can't--even really bright, motivated students with good grades from well-off families. If there's any takeaway from this it's that no one system of education works for everyone and that there ought to be more options for getting practical job training other than college.
posted by Violet Hour at 8:37 PM on February 5, 2013 [9 favorites]

There's plenty of options for job training, esp if you can pay the rate. I am not knocking her choices--she got married, has kids, seems fine. Maybe she'll get another book published. maybe not.
posted by Ideefixe at 9:38 PM on February 5, 2013

Huh. She is very strange sounding (her manner of speaking is one that I associate with old, quirky SF people)

It sounds a bit like a "transatlantic accent", you can here an example here at 2 minutes 12 seconds or so.
posted by delmoi at 10:23 PM on February 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

Also vocal fry tone ouch my ears.
posted by incessant at 11:13 PM on February 5, 2013 [3 favorites]

Also vocal fry tone ouch my ears.
You probably also complain about the singular "they" and these newfangled horseless carriages.
posted by knile at 12:03 AM on February 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

What, exactly, did she do with her life? I remember growing up with a lot of intellectual energy and being told from an early age you need to contribute. She was raised with all the privilege in the world, and she was clearly extraordinarily talented and had the discipline to teach herself so much stuff on her own. Then what happened?

She continued to read and investigate, worked a few jobs, got married, had a kid, helped her stepdaughter do high school by a similar route to hers, and is now devoting most of her time to helping to found a charter school in her community while her stepdaughter gets ready to apply to college...sounds like "giving back" to me.
posted by Wylla at 1:40 AM on February 6, 2013 [8 favorites]

and to keep you stimulated and engaged...

But do you have to stimulated by and engaged with the business world?

I remember growing up with a lot of intellectual energy and being told from an early age you need to contribute.

Where "contribute" apparently only means "to a capitalist's bottom line".

Why can't I be stimulated by learning? Engaged in challenges such as figuring out new skills or teaching my kids? Why can't I contribute to society and world history by understanding some new fact or writing a book or even just explaining existing things to my friends?
posted by DU at 4:01 AM on February 6, 2013 [12 favorites]

Because other people have more, DU.
posted by mr. digits at 4:21 AM on February 6, 2013 [2 favorites]

But do you have to stimulated by and engaged with the business world?

No. There are lots of things you can do with your life that aren't involved with the business world or even about money.

Look, I wasn't criticizing, as much as I was asking because, well, can't you tell her apart from someone who went to finishing school, married and settled down. Because wealthy Victorian ladies were actually extremely well-read and mastered several languages and could play classical piano, too. She comes across less as "brilliant woman with too much energy to be contained by The System" as much as "literate lady of leisure."

Not sure what she is trying to say beyond, "You, too, can be happy by reading a lot at home." Sure, who can't (well, for those of us who like to read)? And many of us do! But her life sounds like it was a very passive one. She talks about in her interview writing a novel, but it doesn't seem to have been published. She seems to have written a play as a hobby experiment in her early 20s. She talks about having never been to any kind of lecture (really? all those various lectures going on in LA, and she's never been to one?). Her parents were the ones told her to read Proust, rather than, as I would have expected from an autodidact, someone who sought out various mentors to feed her the intellectual stimulation she craved. Her speech patterns remind me of people who were fairly socially isolated growing up.

An interesting contrast here is Margie Profet (MeFi), who herself never found a niche within traditional education but became a reasonably well-regarded researcher and thinker.
posted by deanc at 5:05 AM on February 6, 2013 [3 favorites]

There's plenty of options for job training

No, there really aren't anymore. Apprenticeships, vocational training, really any kind of job training outside of a college classroom setting hardly exists anymore, and where it does the demand so outpaces the supply that only a fraction of even qualified applicants are accepted. They have been cutting this stuff for decades now.
posted by enn at 5:14 AM on February 6, 2013

So she became the smartest, best read part time employee at the toy store?

Isn't that all most of us with unprofitable academic interests can hope for these days, with or without formal schooling?
posted by Selena777 at 5:25 AM on February 6, 2013

Because other people have more, DU.

More what, though? The only thing I desperately want more of is time.
posted by DU at 5:45 AM on February 6, 2013 [3 favorites]

Look, I wasn't criticizing, as much as I was asking because, well, can't you tell her apart from someone who went to finishing school, married and settled down.

Well then, she's not so different from most of us - although she arguably contributed more than a lot of us will or have by doing what she did when she was so young and then writing a book about it. Lots of people remember the book she wrote and were inspired by it.
posted by rtha at 5:48 AM on February 6, 2013

Sorry, I intended to cite the "Bleak Stuff" link in general and the study associated with it, instead of my post in the thread in particular.
posted by Selena777 at 5:50 AM on February 6, 2013

Look, I wasn't criticizing, as much as I was asking because, well, can't you tell her apart from someone who went to finishing school, married and settled down. Because wealthy Victorian ladies were actually extremely well-read and mastered several languages and could play classical piano, too. She comes across less as "brilliant woman with too much energy to be contained by The System" as much as "literate lady of leisure."

I think for most people, writing one popular book might feel like enough of a contribution to society. Not everyone aspires to be rich and famous. I once met a girl who had a full ride scholarship to my university because she did really well in high school, especially in terms of math and science.

She was a drama major and told me her ambition was to go back home and be active in community theater. It seemed totally strange to me, I mean it's one thing to give up a promising carrier if someone had a passion for theater and dreamed of going to Broadway. But that's not what she wanted at all, she just wanted to do community theater and was basically just going to college for fun, and because for her it was completely free.

It still seems weird. But remember, this girl didn't necessarily even write the book because she wanted to be famous and well known, both her parents were authors so for her it might have just seemed like a normal thing to do, and of course her parents would have had the connections needed to get her book in front of the right editors and publishers

_{No, there really aren't anymore. Apprenticeships, vocational training, really any kind of job training outside of a college classroom setting hardly exists anymore, and where it does the demand so outpaces the supply that only a fraction of even qualified applicants are accepted. They have been cutting this stuff for decades now.}

<sub>Not only that, but companies are just to cheap and lazy to bother investing in their employees themselves, why risk investing in an employee who might bounce when you can get prospective employees to take all the risk and pay for it themselves with student loans that they'll always be on the hook for even if they go bankrupt? I think I remember Bill Clinton talking about the skills gap on The Daily Show once and IIRC he specifically mentioned biomedical statisticians as a position that companies had a lot of trouble filling. But to me, it seems like anyone who's good at math and statistics could do if they were given some time to get to speed.

On the other hand, if a person were to hear that and decide it would be a good idea to study that (maybe they're in college, or they might enroll in a massively over-priced online degree program) they're taking a huge risk. The market could end up being saturated, or the market could change and that job might become obsolete.

(In fact, I also remember hearing middle aged guy who got laid off from a factory and couldn't find work. The state helped him get job training - but the training he got was for PC repair, something that was big in the 90s when everyone had desktops but these days it's really obsolite. At least he didn't have to pay for it himself)

Anyway, kind of getting far afield here. Main point is that companies should be the ones to pay to educate people when they need "niche" skills, rather then having individuals take huge risks with their careers when technology and the markets change so quickly</sub>

More what, though? The only thing I desperately want more of is time.

More STUFF. Don't you want a fast car and these "geek" sneakers with circuit boards on them? How will you communicate your individuality and love of technology and comfortable footwear without them?

Come on dude, they're only $1,290! How can you afford not to get them?
posted by delmoi at 5:51 AM on February 6, 2013 [3 favorites]

For people wondering about the pushback, I think part of the issue is that people like Kendall often start in a very privileged position which gives them the opportunity to do stuff that a lot of people would like to do for which they are then lauded.

I remember a similar situation a few years ago in which someone did not attend high school but instead did stuff like learn French by going to France and studying in a cloister or something and she was fawned over for doing something so different and wonderful. It really irked me because it implied that she was doing something great and better and really she was doing something privileged. The reason I didn't go to France to study French in high school isn't because I lacked the drive or imagination or desire, it's because that really wasn't an option for me financially (and I come from a pretty fair amount of financial privilege myself), so seeing people who have fantastic opportunities you lack and then being praised for having these opportunities as if it makes them morally superior can be kind of painful.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 6:14 AM on February 6, 2013 [18 favorites]

Don't you want a fast car and these "geek" sneakers with circuit boards on them?

I wanted them when I assumed there were actual circuit boards that did something on them, not just stupid pictures of circuit boards. I would also like an adult-sized version of those light-up shoes kids used to have. Thank you.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 6:16 AM on February 6, 2013 [3 favorites]

Lots of people remember the book she wrote and were inspired by it.

I just think the book seems like there was less to it than there actually was. If anything, she's more along the model of, "genius from an isolated place who couldn't do anything with their genius because of their life circumstances" rather than, "person who couldn't make her mark on the world until she realized she need to stop letting herself be constrained by The System." She lived at home with her parents and read a lot, and became quite literate and (a certain model of) articulate, as was the model for most wealthy women pre-WWI.

I'm sure her book was good, but in a flip of the usual model, it was my teachers who told me that learning is a lifelong, self-directed process than isn't limited to the classroom. I didn't need to take a book out of the library to tell me that! And I wouldn't want to follow her path down that road.

I guess her ultimate message is, "most of us end up in the same place, so in the end, you don't really have to struggle through a system you don't like just to get there." But for those who criticize traditional education for turning people into anonymous suburban drones, it's not like she's a testimony for how you "break out of that."

One of the most fabulous/fascinating/ambitious people I know in DC dropped out of high school. But she's not interesting simply because she dropped out of high school. She's fascinating for a lot of other reasons and in a way that Kendall is not. If anything, the story of Kendall Haily is something between a warning and a life lesson-- none of what you accomplish has much to do with how smart you are, and in some cases the privileged environment you grew up in can actually be a hindrance. Or maybe the story of inspiration is how she avoided becoming burned out and traumatized by traditional education, poor and suffering from anxiety, and ended up being able to live a relatively normal life despite her disabilities.
posted by deanc at 6:24 AM on February 6, 2013 [2 favorites]

Vo-tech in Southern Californa includes beauty school, chef schools, apprenticeships in below-the-line jobs in film and TV--some in community colleges, some in privately run places. My hair stylist went to a very prestigious girls's school in Hancock Park(old money section of LA) did two years at USC and realized she'd rather cut hair, so she went to Vidal Sassoon, and is her own boss. I'm sure if Kendall Hailey wanted to be a stylist or a grip or a baker, she would have done so. She chose something else.
posted by Ideefixe at 6:46 AM on February 6, 2013

> But for those who criticize traditional education for turning people into anonymous suburban drones, it's not like she's a testimony for how you "break out of that."

Really? That's all you see her as—an anonymous suburban drone? You have some bizarre standards for what it means to live a good life.
posted by languagehat at 7:47 AM on February 6, 2013 [4 favorites]

She also grew up surrounded by industries where formal education and credentials are unimportant. The film producer Jon Peters broke in to the industry because be was Barbra Streisand's hair stylist. Actors don't typically finish college. She grew up around writers and playwrights, plenty of whom got formally educated while refining their craft, but it's definitely not necessary. Among other non-formally educated geniuses, there's always this guy.

I think there was something else going on. If her book were published in the 00s rather than the 80s, likely a lot of MeFites would be giving her a long distance diagnosis of Asperger's. She seems to have a non-neurotypical way of interfacing with the world socially and intellectually. In the video interview linked to above, she expresses discomfort with the idea of moving out of her parents' home. Viewed as someone with a developmental disorder, she is an inspiration as someone who manages to become a literate, educated person with a "normal" life with the support of her parents despite her challenges, rather than going into a downward spiral of depression and self-medication that hits a lot of people who don't thrive in a classroom or an office.
posted by deanc at 8:09 AM on February 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

Though this grand old house was built for a staff, I have yet to find them hiding anywhere, so I am of necessity, and quite joyfully, a devoted practitioner of the domestic arts.

Hmmm. Even though I loved the premise, I'm pretty sure it was this tone that made me dislike her book years ago.
posted by JanetLand at 9:07 AM on February 6, 2013 [2 favorites]

I loved this book back when I was in high school, and shared it with a few of my smartest friends. We all wished we could do what she did, but we had to, you know, get a damn job and support ourselves. :7)

I am pleased to see that she is doing well.
posted by wenestvedt at 9:22 AM on February 6, 2013

LAT interview in 1988. I'd guess that growing up as the child of writers, the unspoken expectation that she would write was always there, hanging around the atmosphere. So she did, and now she never has to do it again. Interesting that her husband has the blog., not that I deplore the lack of more mommyblogs. Maybe if she was coming of age now, she'd be acting on Girls.
posted by Ideefixe at 9:55 AM on February 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

I had never heard of her before, or her book, but man I enjoyed reading that interview.
I don't really get the hate here. Yes, she came of privilege and used that to try something her own way. Considering metafilter is primary westerners, and I think overwhelmingly USian (I may be mistaken, but I doubt it), we all have elements of privilege, so I think it's a bit ridiculous to critique her choices on that basis.
As for the interpretation that this is being presented as "better" than the mainstream alternative, I haven't read her original book, but I didn't get that impression from these interviews. That may say more about you than Kendall (yeah, we're on a first name basis now).
Personally, I found this interview to be incredibly charming, as vitabellosi said upthread. Good for her for finding what she wanted out of life; I think her life sounds awesome.
posted by staccato signals of constant information at 10:31 AM on February 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

Despite the assumptions being made after my earlier comment ("So she became the smartest, best read part time employee at the toy store?"), I am emphatically not some career-oriented person with a contempt for alternative models of education. (Actually, I'm a dishwasher repairman who's teaching himself Hungarian in his spare time.)

The thing I would point out about Kendall Hailey is that she presented autodidacticism as her bold choice, eschewing normative models of education to make her own, highly idiosyncratic way in this world. But time has basically shown that her real goals seem to have been finding intellectualized reasons to feel very good and confident about not wanting to leave home for school or pursue a career because she'd rather hang with her family and read.

There's not a thing in this world wrong with hanging out with your family and reading, any more than there is anything wrong with not pursuing traditional avenues of high achievement. If you doubt my sincerity on this, I would only tell you that after I unplug this drain, I'm going to go home and teach myself some Magyarul grammar while my kid plays superheroes at my feet.

People aren't criticizing Kendall Hailey because of her choices. They are criticizing how her choices put the lie to her declarations of intent. Because in the end, charming and precocious as her book was on its own terms at the time, it was really just a lot of poncing around from someone who wanted to rationalize staying home and reading a lot.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:04 PM on February 6, 2013 [5 favorites]

They are criticizing how her choices put the lie to her declarations of intent. Because in the end

... everyone knows that the declarations made by a 16-year-old should be taken dead seriously and that 16-year-old should be held to them forever after, amen.

I'm damn lucky that none of the declarations I made about what I was going to do with my life when I was that age were made in a form that anyone can still read, or even remembers.
posted by rtha at 1:23 PM on February 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

You know what? Let me make it even clearer...

Am I supposed to treat this woman like she's the first smart person in history who ever took her books and went home instead of going full-tilt into the rat race? Like she's some kind of zen genius for doing what I and ten bajillion other people have also done, dating back to when education first began? After all, she did write a book about it, with a bunch of rationalizations for it she kind of threw away over the years.

Are we praising her for the book she wrote, with all of its goals and its declarations of intent? Or are we praising her as a smart person who found some happiness despite a menial job because of time well-spent learning? Because if its the former, shouldn't the fact that she didn't follow through on anything matter? And if it's the former, shouldn't it dampen our enthusiasm somewhat that this is pretty darned common?
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:36 PM on February 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

Dammit. Obviously, the second "former" should be "latter."
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:42 PM on February 6, 2013

rtha: ... everyone knows that the declarations made by a 16-year-old should be taken dead seriously and that 16-year-old should be held to them forever after, amen.

I'm damn lucky that none of the declarations I made about what I was going to do with my life when I was that age were made in a form that anyone can still read, or even remembers.

You are lucky. Because if you'd written a book back then about how those declarations would shape your entire life and we were doing a "Where are they now?" thing on you... it would not only be fair to bring up whether you stuck to your ideas, it would be entirely on-point.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:33 PM on February 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

You really hold every decision and declaration made by a 16-year-old to be The Thing They Must Hold To Evermore? Why? So you can feel disappointed in them later or something?

Because most teenagers are, to put it not very kindly, hubristic idiots prone to making wildly hyperbolic statements about what they're going to do with their lives: become a star NBA player! Make a zillion dollars like Beyonce! Find the cure for cancer!

There's nothing wrong with ambition or hope or wanting something bigger than what you've got when you're 16. But it's useful for those of us who aren't 16 anymore to remember that at that age you lack a kind of perspective and knowledge that can really only come with having lived a bunch more years.

That, and the fact that people are allowed to change their minds. When I was 12 I was going to be the next Jacques Cousteau. Guess what, I'm not.
posted by rtha at 2:56 PM on February 6, 2013

Sounds like a dream job. Play for a few hours a day, then have the rest of the day for reading and learning more.

Having worked in a toy store, I have to say that it is really not the same as "playing." Toys are great and all, but you deal with a lot of the same stuff every other retail employee does - long hours on your feet, terrible pay, lots of boring tasks (inventory, constant straightening and cleaning), difficult customers, etc.

But regardless, I loved Hailey's book (along with The Teenage Liberation Handbook, mentioned above by Sokka shot first) in high school. My repeated efforts to convince my parents to let me do anything along those lines were complete failures.
posted by naoko at 3:55 PM on February 6, 2013

You really hold every decision and declaration made by a 16-year-old to be The Thing They Must Hold To Evermore?

I absolutely do not.

However, if--at any point in your life--you write a book saying that you're going to live your life in a specific manner to achieve a specific result, I don't think it's unkind or unfair when checking in on you and your book years later to see if that's what happened, or to take note if it turns out it was never really your plan in the first place.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 4:01 PM on February 6, 2013 [2 favorites]

When I was 12 I was going to be the next Jacques Cousteau. Guess what, I'm not.

If it turned out that after having gone scuba diving once after being inspired by all the nature shows you watched, you never traveled or even went swimming in the ocean ever again, and actually just preferred to sit around watching nature shows on TV, I don't think it would be unfair to use your life path as an object lesson in, "How to end up not becoming the next Jacques Cousteau."
posted by deanc at 4:51 PM on February 6, 2013 [3 favorites]

Sure.
posted by rtha at 8:15 PM on February 6, 2013