A few things.....1) virtual school requires a lot of motivation and personal responsibility. There's not anyone calling home or breathing down your neck to turn in your stuff. 2) Check your learning style, if you're a hands on learner, virtual school will be tough. You really need to be strong in linguistic and visual learning styles and be a strong reader. There won't be a lot of hands on lab, demonstration sort of things, more reading, analysis, answering and collaborating online with others virtually. If you learn well by reading and listening you should be okay. 3) Weigh what's important. Do you like football friday night with the marching band? Prom? basketball games? school musicals? clubs, dances, graduation ceremonies all the extra little things that make high school cool (let's face it no one remembers "class" at their reunion....they remember all the extra stuff that made high school fun). Last and most important, what's your future goal? If youre looking to go to college (especially a D-1 school) you'll want to be careful about virtual school. Is that going to be competitive on a college application? Is it an accredited school? will you still have a class rank etc to fill in. You don't want to make things "easier" now and shoot yourself in the foot for later.
I tend to think the greatest education high school gives is the social part. There is nothing you won't meet in real life that's not on some micro scale in high school. Girls stealing boyfriends becomes wifes stealing husbands. Kids cheating and getting away with it will be people cheating on a time sheet or moving up the career ladder unethically. Bullying, that's everywhere at every age. Balancing multiple things at once, that's something you'll have to continue to learn to do.
That's what I think the true benefit of high school is...not so much the academic education but all that other "stuff."
