Growing up in Takoma Park, Md., Abraham Joyner-Meyers lived only a few blocks from the local elementary school. But the district stopped offering kindergarten just as Joyner-Meyers was about to enroll. So his mom, at work on a book in a home office, set up a desk for him next to hers.

“It went really well,” said Joyner-Meyers, a student in the five-year dual degree program with Berklee College of Music. “After a year of homeschooling, not only was it good with my relationship with her, but it also gave me enormous freedom to study what I wanted.”

A self-described book nerd, Joyner-Meyers read voraciously, learned math with help from his dad, and for a time studied acting.

“I loved the freedom to be at home and to go out in the community,” he said. “I went to book groups at my local library, which was the first place I walked to myself, and later into D.C. to art museums.”

Joyner-Meyers doesn’t think music would have the same prominence in his life had he not been homeschooled. His work with the acting group introduced him to older students who were thriving outside institutional high schools. Their enthusiasm gave Joyner-Meyers, a violinist, a model for interacting with local artists. He eventually expanded to Irish folk music and started playing at festivals, then in a band, then in his own group.

“In D.C., the Irish music scene is surprisingly alive,” he said.

Part of the first cohort of Harvard-Berklee students, Joyner-Meyers said he feels more empowered to shape his academic and musical education in dual studies than he would if he had enrolled in a conservatory-only program.

“The education is more diverse having the resources of two schools,” he said, adding that he has already performed with the Hyperion Shakespeare Company and been invited to play mandolin in a quartet. “My dream is to unite Shakespeare and music into some interest as an actor-scholar. It’s exciting to be one of the first students, and to think about how it’s going to work in the future. We’re lab rats just a little bit, and it’s worth it.”

Kemen Linsuain ’18

From his earliest years as a student, Kemen Linsuain’s interest in math and physics outstripped opportunity in his Pittsburgh school district.

Though his parents made the call on homeschooling, it was Linsuain who guided his own education.

“There wasn’t much of a plan or a long-term plan going in; I just took classes I was interested in,” said Linsuain, who was attending college math and physics courses by age 12 at Carnegie Mellon and Penn. State (where his dad taught at the time). “Next to CMU is the public library and science museum [Carnegie Museum of Natural History], so between classes I would just hang out there.”

The Kirkland House resident, who works in the lab of physicist Philip Kim researching low-dimensional materials, plans to move to Washington, D.C., after graduation for a position as an analyst with the consulting firm Dean and Company.

“I have always had a bit more of an outsider’s perspective on things,” he said. “During the job recruiting, I found that view pretty useful. I really had no preconceptions or stereotypes about things in the process. It was kind of nice. I was a little more free to be myself.”