Doug Meyers: Journey Chakrobarty on School, Work, Five Mothers, and What Everyone Keeps Getting Wrong

May 31, 2440
The Meyers Show Podcast
Recorded via Zoom from Chakrobarty Farms
Guest: Journey Chakrobarty

Doug Meyers normally saves his televised show for Fridays in Chicago. His conversations with members of the Chakrobarty family have been something less formal: microphones, a video connection to the farm, and the occasional interruption from somebody walking through a kitchen.

After talking with Rayya Chakrobarty, Jimnah, and Claudia, Meyers invited Journey Chakrobarty to fill in what she thought everyone was still missing.

Journey, forty-two, is Rayya’s first wife. She teaches geometry and occasionally statistics. She is also the mother of Daniel Chakrobarty, the couple’s first son, who died of SIDS and would now be eighteen.

Doug Meyers: I have known you people for years, and somehow the rest of the world has managed to turn your breakfast schedule into a child-development crisis.

Journey Chakrobarty: I think they believe our children never go to school.

Doug: That allegation has appeared.

Journey: All of our children go to school unless they’re under five, in which case they aren’t old enough yet.

That’s the easy part.

Jimnah, Claudia and Buella aren’t skipping school to work on the farm or run around safehouses. They’re in an operational-management internship through school.

Doug: Let’s unpack that, because I think most people heard “fourteen-year-old running HR” and stopped listening.

Journey: Jimnah started hers last school year because she’s a year ahead of the other two academically. Claudia and Buella started this school year.

Under Jimnah’s normal schedule, her internship and graduation project require her to be on campus one day a week. Claudia and Buella have one full day plus two afternoons on campus.

The rest of their school work and internship work are integrated.

That’s not unusual here.

About half of the fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds in the Freehold have some version of that arrangement. At Marshall, I think it’s around a quarter of the students.

Doug: So this isn’t the Chakrobarty family inventing its own educational system because somebody needed the goats chased.

Journey: No.

Although the goats do need chased.

We expect school to connect to what you’re actually learning to do with your life.

Some students are more classroom-heavy. Some are in trades. Some are doing business or agricultural placements. Some are working on technical projects.

The girls chose operational management because they’re good at it.

Anybody who has met Claudia for ten minutes understands why.

Doug: Queen of Lists.

Journey: She has earned the title.

Doug: What changed after the V’ren landed?

Journey: Regular classes were suspended for the rest of the year.

There was simply too much disruption, and we had too many new students and too many things changing at once. Graduating students still have to complete their projects and whatever remaining requirements they have.

The language classes people keep hearing about are something different.

Those are old-fashioned language classes. One local teacher and one English-speaking V’ren teaching together.

Very basic, very human, sit in a room and talk to each other.

Doug: As opposed to plugging into the machine.

Journey: I lasted maybe twenty minutes in that canned thing.

Matt named it the Orgasmatron.

Doug: Of course he did.

Journey: He thought it was cute.

I did not.

If I want to learn another language, I’ll sit with somebody and embarrass myself the traditional way.

Doug: So with regular school suspended, the girls are now doing their internships full days?

Journey: Yes, because that’s what we do when school is out.

They aren’t sitting in the house for three months waiting for somebody to entertain them.

They work, see friends, go places, have clubs, practice whatever they’re interested in, complain about chores, and do all the ordinary things kids here do.

Doug: One criticism is that there cannot possibly be time for all of that if they’re working constantly.

Journey: They don’t work constantly.

Claudia and Buella usually make two or three safehouse runs a week with Rayya. One is normally on a weekend day. Two are during the week.

And not every run is some twelve-hour humanitarian odyssey.

Sometimes nobody has arrived anywhere and there is nothing to do beyond inspection.

Sometimes one group is at one house and they’re finished quickly.

On days they go out, they’re usually home by three.

Sometimes they come home. Sometimes they end up at the homestead. Sometimes they go wherever else their father is going.

Then they have friends.

They have clubs.

They have lives.

Doug: And apparently complicated transportation requirements.

Journey: That is why Hephzibah learned to drive three years ago.

When the girls started getting clubs and school schedules and internship schedules, coordinating everyone became ridiculous.

You can have all the theories you want about family organization. Eventually somebody has band practice at the same time somebody else has a meeting, and another child has to be picked up somewhere.

That is when philosophy becomes car keys.

Doug: I want to ask you something more personal, because the family structure has become the story whether any of you wanted it to or not.

You were first.

Journey: I was.

Doug: How did that happen?

Journey: Bad weather.

Doug: Naturally.

Journey: I’m from Cebu. I’m the youngest of nine.

My mother had a series of husbands who eventually decided they didn’t care anymore and walked away. So I did not grow up with some romantic idea that marriage automatically meant permanence.

I was teaching when a tornado damaged the school.

Rayya was an electrician doing repairs on my classroom.

Doug: That’s your great romantic origin?

Journey: He fixed the lights.

Very sexy.

Doug: Be still my heart.

Journey: He found out the house I was living in had also been badly damaged.

He called his mother.

I did not know he was doing that.

Before I entirely understood what was happening, his parents had arrived with a truck, and I was riding around with them trying to salvage what I still owned.

By the time Rayya finished work that evening, I was sitting at his family’s supper table.

We haven’t really been apart since.

Doug: That sounds remarkably Chakrobarty.

Journey: Nobody asked me to join a lifestyle.

Nobody recruited me.

I met a man whose first response to finding out I had lost my home was to call his family and send help.

I liked what I saw.

Then I liked him.

Doug: And Daniel came first.

Journey: Yes.

Daniel should be eighteen.

He died of SIDS.

There are parts of that period I remember perfectly and parts I barely remember at all.

Kate was enormously important to me then.

She had lost a son in Jamaica before she came here.

She knew what grief like that felt like without needing me to explain it.

That bonded us in a way I can’t really describe neatly.

Doug: And that relationship became part of the household.

Journey: Yes.

People want the marriages to have some grand recruitment process.

Mostly people came into our lives and stayed because they wanted to.

Vijaya came next.

She was a new teacher.

She started coming over for dinner.

Then she kept coming over for dinner.

Doug: The old Missouri courtship ritual.

Journey: Food is powerful.

One Friday night we had too much of Matt’s homemade wine and Vijaya announced that she liked what we had and wanted it too.

Doug: That’s direct.

Journey: Very.

We dealt with the hangovers the next morning.

Then we dealt with the actual conversation.

And then we moved her in.

Doug: That may be the least ceremonial plural-marriage origin story ever recorded.

Journey: I’m sorry we disappoint.

Doug: Never.

You said something before we started that I want you to repeat, because I think it’s probably the most important part of how you see the household.

Journey: They’re all my kids.

I don’t make a distinction.

I know who gave birth to whom. I’m not confused about biology.

But if one of those children needs their mother, I am one of their mothers.

That’s it.

Doug: You said you’re probably closest to Jimnah.

Journey: I am.

Vijaya had a very hard pregnancy with her.

We nearly lost Vijaya, and then the delivery was worse and we nearly lost Jimnah too.

I took time off work.

I cared for Vijaya and the baby.

I cared for the other women.

I cared for the other babies.

They cared for me.

That period became part of my recovery from losing Daniel.

So yes, Jimnah and I have always been especially close.

That isn’t because I think she is secretly mine.

It’s because sometimes relationships are built in places that biology doesn’t explain.

Doug: Which makes the timing of her phone call to me funnier.

Journey: She came to me before she called you.

Doug: You knew.

Journey: Of course I knew.

She told me about the boys showing up for Claudia, her biscuit-and-gravy testing system, and the boys she had recruited into the kitchen.

I thought it was hilarious.

Doug: You did not stop her.

Journey: Why would I?

We needed help with breakfast.

The boys wanted to be there.

Jimnah was enjoying herself.

Claudia was oblivious.

Everyone was benefiting.

Doug: The free market solves romance.

Journey: Something like that.

Although I think some of the boys are now showing up specifically to stand in Jimnah’s kitchen.

Doug: Ah.

The hunter becomes the hunted.

Journey: She’s our most photo-shy child, so she hasn’t quite developed Claudia’s public following.

But people have eyes.

Doug: I’ve met Jimnah.

She’s a very pretty girl, a damned good cook, and an even scarier shot.

Journey: Yes.

Doug: That was an extremely maternal “yes.”

Journey: Boys should have accurate information.

Doug: Is she aware that you’re now discussing her admirers?

Journey: She discussed Claudia’s with millions of people.

I believe this is called consequences.

Doug: The Chakrobarty family doctrine strikes again.

Journey: We believe in education.

Doug: I want to circle back to that, because from outside, people keep seeing work and interpreting it as deprivation.

What do you think they’re failing to understand?

Journey: That education is bigger than sitting at a desk.

I teach geometry.

I teach statistics sometimes.

I believe in classrooms.

I also know that a student can calculate an area perfectly on paper and still have no idea how to organize a real project.

The girls’ internship teaches them to deal with people.

It teaches them to document things.

It teaches them to schedule work.

It teaches them that plans fail.

It teaches them that somebody will not show up.

Somebody will misunderstand instructions.

Somebody will need help you did not expect.

Then you solve the problem.

That is education too.

Doug: What about helping raise siblings?

Journey: Same answer.

They aren’t substitute mothers.

They have mothers.

Lots of mothers.

They help because they’re members of a family.

The little ones also help according to what they’re capable of doing.

Nobody turns eighteen and suddenly receives responsibility as a birthday gift.

You practice it.

Doug: You realize that sentence alone will feed another week of commentary.

Journey: Good.

They can argue about it while Claudia finishes her lists.

Doug: Journey Chakrobarty, geometry teacher, occasional statistics teacher, first wife, mother of nineteen depending on whether you ask biology or her, and apparently co-conspirator in Jimnah’s matrimonial breakfast laboratory.

Journey: I didn’t say I approved the methodology.

Doug: You laughed.

Journey: Peer review has begun.

Doug: There it is.

This has been The Meyers Show Podcast, recorded from Chakrobarty Farms, where the children attend school, the teachers apparently drink dangerous homemade wine, and somewhere at three tomorrow morning a teenage boy will discover his romantic prospects depend on sausage gravy.

Journey: Tell him not to scorch it.

Doug: I’ll put it on the list.

1. The Chakrobarty Girls Are Not Skipping School. Their Work Is School.

Education & Society Review

Journey Chakrobarty may have supplied the missing fact in weeks of arguments about her daughters.

Jimnah, Claudia and Buella are not being pulled out of school to work on the family farm.

Their work is part of school.

The three are enrolled in operational-management internships. Jimnah, now fifteen and a year ahead academically, began hers last year. Her graduation track normally requires one day a week on campus. Claudia and Buella attend one full day and two afternoons while completing integrated academic and field work.

That arrangement is not unique to their family.

Journey estimates roughly half of Freehold students aged fifteen and sixteen, and about a quarter of Marshall students, use comparable work-integrated schedules.

Regular classes were suspended after first contact, although graduating students must still complete projects and other requirements. The Chakrobarty girls therefore shifted to full internship days for the remainder of the term.

The distinction matters.

A fourteen-year-old maintaining safehouse records or processing applicants looks very different if the observer assumes she should be sitting in geometry class.

In Claudia’s case, the person who might otherwise be teaching that geometry is one of her mothers.

The Freehold is not replacing education with work.

It has decided that some work qualifies as education.

2. “They’re All My Kids”: Journey Chakrobarty Explains the Part Outsiders Keep Missing

Family Life International

Journey Chakrobarty knows perfectly well which of the nineteen Chakrobarty children she gave birth to.

She simply does not regard biology as determining which ones are hers.

“They’re all my kids,” she told Doug Meyers.

That sentence may explain the household better than diagrams showing five wives and overlapping birth dates ever could.

Journey is Rayya Chakrobarty’s first wife. Their first son, Daniel, died of SIDS and would now be eighteen. Another wife, Kate, had previously lost a son in Jamaica and became one of Journey’s strongest supports through Daniel’s death.

Later, when Vijaya nearly died during a difficult pregnancy and Jimnah nearly died during delivery, Journey took leave from work and helped care for Vijaya, her co-wives and the babies.

She describes that period as part of her own recovery.

That history helps explain why Journey says she is particularly close to Jimnah despite not being her biological mother.

The Chakrobarty household does not appear to operate as five separate maternal territories sharing one husband.

It operates as one family with multiple mothers.

That will not make plural marriage appealing to everyone.

It does make the phrase “half-sister” nearly useless for understanding how the children themselves relate to one another.

5. Jimnah Tested Claudia’s Admirers. Her Mother Says the Boys May Now Be Coming for Jimnah.

The Daily Current

There has been an unexpected development in the Chakrobarty Farms biscuit-and-gravy courtship experiment.

The evaluator may have become a participant.

Jimnah Chakrobarty recently told Doug Meyers that dozens of boys were appearing at the family farm partly because of her sister Claudia. Jimnah responded by putting some to work in her kitchen and jokingly testing their marriage suitability according to their ability to make biscuits and gravy.

Journey Chakrobarty knew about the scheme before Doug did.

She thought it was hilarious.

Now Journey suspects some boys are arriving at 3:00 AM not to impress Claudia, but to spend time in Jimnah’s kitchen.

That creates an interesting problem for the family’s most camera-shy daughter.

Jimnah has avoided much of the attention that turned Claudia into an international personality. People who meet her, however, apparently notice her anyway.

Doug Meyers did not help.

He described Jimnah as “very pretty, a damned good cook, and an even scarier shot.”

Journey’s response was a deeply maternal:

“Yes.”

She also noted that Jimnah had publicly discussed Claudia’s admirers before an audience of millions.

If Jimnah now finds her own breakfast shift filling with suspiciously enthusiastic teenage boys, Journey considers that fair.

The Chakrobarty doctrine remains consistent.

Complaints have consequences.

Apparently so does gossip.

• 30 Social Reactions to Journey Chakrobarty on Doug Meyers
• @CebuGirlInKC:
  Journey meeting Rayya because he was fixing her classroom after a tornado and then his MOM showing up with a truck to rescue her belongings is the most Missouri courtship story imaginable.
  • @OzarksAuntie:
    Forget flowers. Bring Mom, a pickup, and tie-down straps.
• @PolyFamilyWatcher:
  “I was at his family’s supper table when he got home and we haven’t really been apart since.” Ma’am that is a romance novel opening.
  • @RiverCountyDad:
    Around here that’s called getting adopted by the family before the boy realizes what’s happening.
• @GeometryNerd88:
  Journey teaches geometry AND occasionally statistics?Suddenly Claudia’s personality makes even more sense.
  • @TeacherInMarshall:
    Imagine being raised by multiple teachers and then becoming the Queen of Lists. There was never another possible outcome.
• @TeamJourney:
  “The kids are all mine. I don’t make a distinction.”That one got me.
  • @BigFamilyMissouri:
    People who grow up in blended families understood exactly what she meant before she finished saying it.
• @JimnahKitchenFan:
  Journey admitting she knew about the biscuit marriage trials before Doug did is spectacular.
  • @BreakfastShift3AM:
    More importantly, she DIDN’T STOP HER.
• @ConsequencesAgain:
  Jimnah publicly discusses Claudia’s admirers.Journey: some boys may now be coming for Jimnah.This family runs entirely on consequences.
  • @FarmGirl79:
    And breakfast.Never forget breakfast.
• @VrenBoyScout:
  I would like to know how many teenage boys woke up this morning and realized they are now being evaluated by five mothers.
  • @MidwestTeenBoy:
    That is not courtship. That is a boss battle.
• @GravyCandidate:
  Jimnah: tests Claudia’s prospective husbands on biscuits and gravy.Journey: boys may actually be showing up for Jimnah now.Uno reverse card.
  • @BiscuitFailure:
    Imagine failing gravy and losing TWO possible Chakrobarty sisters.
• @PhotoShyClub:
  Jimnah being the most camera-shy while apparently being gorgeous, a great cook and a terrifying marksman feels extremely unfair to everyone else.
  • @RuralGirlEnergy:
    She min-maxed the character sheet and then turned off public visibility.
• @DougMeyersClipFan:
  Doug: “Very pretty, damned good cook, even scarier shot.”Journey: “Yes.”The most threatening maternal endorsement I have ever heard.
  • @BoyFromColumbia:
    That “yes” shortened several teenage life expectancies.
• @SchoolPolicyMom:
  Wait, so the girls are not skipping school? Their operations work is literally part of an internship?
  • @MarshallParent:
    Correct. People built two weeks of outrage on not understanding the schedule.
• @ApprenticeshipDad:
  Half the 15-16 year olds in the Freehold doing integrated work-study sounds way more interesting than sitting in classrooms eight hours a day.
  • @FormerBoredTeen:
    Would have saved me from approximately 400 hours of pretending to listen.
• @CampusKid2440:
  Jimnah being a year ahead academically and only needing campus once a week for internship and graduation work actually explains a lot.
  • @ListQueenFan:
    She is apparently the sister who can cook, shoot, organize, and graduate early.Claudia may need another clipboard just to keep up.
• @SafehouseReality:
  Journey clarifying that Claudia and Buella do 2 or 3 safehouse runs a week, not every dawn forever, should probably end half the discourse.
  • @ThreadArchaeologist:
    It will not.People have already selected their preferred reality.
• @FreeholdTeenLife:
  “Sometimes they come home, sometimes the homestead, sometimes they go do whatever else Dad is doing.”That sounds exactly like every farm teen summer ever.
  • @IowaKid:
    Correct. You stop asking where Dad is and just get in the truck.
• @HephzibahDriverStan:
  Hephzibah learned to drive because everybody’s clubs and schedules became impossible.This may be the most believable detail in the whole family saga.
  • @SoccerMomSurvivor:
    Every large family eventually discovers the true final boss is transportation.
• @MachineLearningNoThanks:
  Journey lasting 20 minutes in the language machine and noping out is my hero.
  • @OldSchoolTeacher:
    She teaches geometry. Of course she chose “sit down and suffer through verbs like civilized people.”
• @OrgasmatronDiscourse:
  Matt naming the learning machine the Orgasmatron should disqualify him from naming technology forever.
  • @BadNamesFan:
    Counterpoint: it proves he must name ALL technology forever.
• @CebuToMissouri:
  Journey being the youngest of nine from Cebu and ending up first wife in a giant Missouri farm family feels like her life just kept saying “more siblings, but different.”
  • @PinayInChicago:
    She escaped being the youngest and somehow became Mom to nineteen. Incredible plot twist.
• @KateAppreciation:
  The part about Kate having already lost a son in Jamaica and helping Journey through Daniel’s death was the part everyone should be talking about.
  • @GriefCircleMom:
    That explains more about how the household became a family than any family tree ever could.
• @VijayaWineStory:
  Vijaya after too much homemade wine: “I like what you have.”Next morning: hangover. Later: moves in permanently. Absolute legend.
  • @FridayNightHistorian:
    The important part is that they had the sober conversation AFTER. Probably with coffee.
• @WineMadeMeDoIt:
  Imagine joining a plural marriage because Friday dinner was too good.
  • @HomeCookedDiplomacy:
    This is why people fear homemade wine and competent cooking.
• @NotHalfAnything:
  I appreciate Journey saying she knows exactly who gave birth to whom; she just doesn’t treat that as the boundary of motherhood.
  • @BlendedFamilyKid:
    Yep. Biology is data. Family is behavior.
• @ParentificationThread97:
  Still sounds like these kids have way too much responsibility.
  • @MarshallGrad:
    Then criticize their actual workload. Stop pretending they have no school, no clubs, no friends, and spend seven days a week running refugee operations when Journey just gave the schedule.
• @ConcernedFromParis:
  Children should not need “operational management internships” at fourteen.
  • @FarmKidMissouri:
    You mean supervised education where they learn project management, documentation, scheduling, and workplace skills?Yeah, horrifying.
• @CultAlarmAgain:
  Five mothers all saying the children are happy doesn’t prove anything.
  • @LargeFamilyGirl:
    And nineteen kids saying they have lives, friends, clubs, jobs, arguments, hobbies, crushes and opinions apparently doesn’t count either?What evidence WOULD count?
• @EuroFamilyCritic:
  The family is too big to function without child labor. That is just math.
  • @ActualFarmAccountant:
    The farm has 63 employees now.If your theory requires ignoring the hired workforce because teenagers also do chores, it may need revision.
• @StanfordSociologyDropout:
  Journey saying “you don’t learn responsibility by having adults remove every responsibility until some birthday” is going to start academic wars.
  • @VocationalTeacher:
    It should.We somehow decided competence is dangerous until exactly 18:00 on the day before legal adulthood.
• @ProfessionalTroll999:
  Breaking: Missouri woman confirms children attend school.National crisis narrowly avoided.
  • @KansasCitySnark:
    Tomorrow: exclusive investigation reveals teenagers also have friends.
• @DefinitelyNotJealous:
  Let me summarize.
  Journey teaches geometry.
  Kate helped her survive grief.
  Vijaya joined after dinner and wine.
  Hephzibah learned to drive because of everybody’s clubs.
  Jimnah runs breakfast and evaluates boys.
  Claudia runs HR.
  Buella runs field work.
  Rayya apparently just drives the truck and occasionally remembers he has nineteen children.
  • @DougClipArchivist:
    This may be the first accurate explanation of the family hierarchy.
    • @MissouriFarmMom:
      Wrong.
      The mothers run it.
      The teenagers document it.
      Rayya gets blamed when the truck is late.
      • @BuellaChakrobarty: Or comes home skunked.

• @MarshallLunchLady:
  The funniest part of this whole international argument is learning people thought Jimnah, Claudia and Buella had somehow stopped going to school. We know where they are. We take attendance.
  • @MarshallJSHS:
    For the record, internship students remain enrolled students with academic requirements, faculty supervision, and scheduled campus time.
  • @FarmMomsUnite:
    Imagine discovering vocational education in 2440.
• @ArrowRockDad:
  Journey finally saying the safehouse runs are two or three times a week should save us from another “these poor children work refugee intake every dawn” article.
  • @EastDistrictNeighbor:
    Some runs last half the day. Some are “house is empty, inventory is good, go home.”
  • @RayyaChakrobarty:
    The empty-house days are my favorite paperwork.
• @MarshallSophomore:
  Half the Freehold 15 and 16 year olds having internship schedules isn’t news to any of us. The weird part is apparently other places still make everybody sit in the same building all week.
  • @CCAEdWatch:
    Work-integrated programs vary by district, but the Freehold has one of the highest participation rates in the region.
  • @MarshallSophomore:
    Please never describe us as a “participation rate” again.
• @RiverRoadMechanic:
  Journey: Hephzibah learned to drive because the kids had too many clubs. There it is. Not ideology.Not polygamy.Soccer-mom logistics.
  • @HephzibahYoder:
    It was not soccer. It was worse.
  • @ClaudiaChakrobarty:
    Debate club, music, martial arts, school projects and three people needing rides in opposite directions.
  • @HephzibahYoder:
    Exactly.
• @BoonvilleTeacher:
  Three wives working in education, and people online still think the Chakrobarty children aren’t being educated.
  • @MarshallMathDept:
    Journey teaches geometry and occasionally statistics. Vijaya and another of the household teach here as well.
  • @LocalDadWithHomework:
    This sounds like the opposite problem. Imagine trying to claim you forgot your math homework in that house.
• @FarmBreakfastFan:
  I need everyone to appreciate that Jimnah’s breakfast operation was already serious before half the adolescent male population discovered it.
  • @ChakrobartyFarmhand:
    Sixty-three employees plus the household. Breakfast is logistics.
  • @KitchenShiftBoy:
    And biscuits are apparently now an entrance examination.
    • @JimnahChakrobarty:
      Only if you make bad biscuits.
• @MarshallGirl15:
  I know three boys who suddenly “love farm work.”They did not love farm work last month.
  • @AnotherMarshallGirl:
    Do they love Claudia or Jimnah?
  • @MarshallGirl15:
    Yes.
• @CampKriegerMom:
  Journey saying all nineteen are her kids made perfect sense to anyone who has actually seen that household.
  • @NorthParkNurse:
    I’ve watched three different mothers correct the same child within five minutes.No one asked for DNA results first.
  • @JourneyChakrobarty:
    Sometimes efficiency requires delegation.
• @LocalGenealogyNerd:
  Outsiders keep studying the Chakrobarty family tree like it’s a forensic document. Around here we just call them siblings.
  • @SalineCountyClerk:
    Accurate.
  • @NabiChakrobarty:
    Until somebody eats something you were saving. Then maternal jurisdiction becomes extremely important.
• @ArrowRockOldTimer:
  Five wives sounds exotic until you’ve met them. Then it mostly sounds like Rayya has five people who know exactly what he did wrong.
  • @RayyaChakrobarty:
    I object to “mostly.”
  • @KateChakrobarty:
    Objection noted and overruled.
• @MarshallParentCouncil:
  The useful thing Journey explained is that internships here aren’t replacing academics. They are part of the academic plan.
  • @SalineCountyEducation:
    Correct. Students remain accountable for academic competencies and graduation requirements while completing approved practical placements.
  • @MuleBarnMike:
    Somebody, please translate that into Missouri.
  • @MarshallParentCouncil:
    They still have homework.
• @ClaudiaClipboardWatch:
  Journey teaches statistics. Claudia categorizes everything literally.Coincidence?
  • @JourneyChakrobarty:
    I taught her enough statistics to be dangerous.
  • @ClaudiaChakrobarty:
    You taught me enough to know most online polls are garbage.
  • @JourneyChakrobarty:
    See?
• @EastDistrictEMT:
  The girls being EMT trainees and helping their paramedic father on safehouse runs seems considerably less mysterious when you actually say the whole sentence.
  • @MarshallMaja:
    Context remains the natural predator of outrage.
• @FarmKid17:
  People keep asking whether Claudia and Buella have friends.I saw them both at a bonfire Saturday.Can confirm teenagers continue to exist.
  • @ClaudiaChakrobarty:
    This sounds suspiciously like surveillance.
  • @FarmKid17:
    You stole my marshmallows.
  • @ClaudiaChakrobarty:
    Evidence?
• @MarshallBandMom:
  The real reason Hephzibah had to learn to drive is that large-family scheduling eventually becomes air traffic control.
  • @HephzibahYoder:
    Correct.
  • @LocalMinivanTech:
    Twenty-five people in the original household, and somehow the villain was still extracurricular pickup.
• @FreeholdIntern17:
  I’m doing an ag equipment placement four days a week and campus one day. Nobody forced me. Nobody has stolen my childhood.I mostly enjoy not having six hours of worksheets.
  • @MarshallTeacherTom:
    You still owe me the worksheet from Tuesday.
  • @FreeholdIntern17:
    I have made a tactical error.
• @RiverfrontMom:
  Journey’s tornado story explains the whole family better than fifty think pieces.Rayya found out she lost her house and called his mother.
  • @SalineCountyAuntie:
    That is basically courtship around here.
  • @RayyaChakrobarty:
    I was attempting to help.
  • @SalineCountyAuntie:
    And how did that work out for you?
  • @RayyaChakrobarty:
    Five wives and nineteen children later, apparently very well.
• @CebuMissouriClub:
  Journey going from youngest of nine in Cebu to mothering a household of nineteen is one hell of a career progression.
  • @JourneyChakrobarty:
    I am still occasionally the youngest in my own head.
  • @VijayaChakrobarty:
    Not when you are assigning chores.
• @MarshallTeacher2:
  Vijaya coming over for dinner repeatedly and eventually announcing, after Matt’s wine, that she wanted in is still my favorite part.
  • @VijayaChakrobarty:
    In my defense, I repeated the request sober.
  • @LocalWineClub:
    Important procedural safeguard.
• @HomesteadCook:
  People are focusing too much on the wine and not enough on the obvious fact that repeated dinner invitations are the Freehold’s most powerful immigration policy.
  • @ArrowRockTattler:
    Come for supper. Accidentally acquire citizenship, employment, and three new mothers.
  • @FreeholdHR:
    This is not an approved recruitment procedure.
• @SafehouseVolunteer:
  Journey describing Claudia and Buella’s schedule is exactly what I’ve seen. They come out. They work. They finish. Then they go do teenager things. Sometimes the teenager thing is unfortunately still more work because they’re weird.
  • @ClaudiaChakrobarty:
    Productivity is recreational.
  • @SafehouseVolunteer:
    See what I mean?
• @LocalBoy14:
  As somebody who has been to the Chakrobarty breakfast table, Jimnah’s biscuit standards are unreasonable.
  • @JimnahChakrobarty:
    Your baking powder was old.
  • @LocalBoy14:
    I was nervous.
  • @JimnahChakrobarty:
    The baking powder was still old.
• @MarshallGirl13:
  Everybody keeps talking about Claudia and Jimnah.Where is Buella in all this?
  • @BuellaChakrobarty:
    minding my own business
  • @MarshallGirl13:
    Probably the smartest Chakrobarty.
  • @NabiChakrobarty:
    By a wide margin this week.
• @LocalBoy15:
  Buella saying “minding my own business” while her sisters accidentally create international courtship discourse is elite survival instinct.
  • @BuellaChakrobarty:
    I have learned from observation.
  • @ClaudiaChakrobarty:
    Coward.
  • @BuellaChakrobarty:
    Busy coward.
• @ChakrobartyNeighbor:
  Jimnah is four months older than Claudia and six months older than Buella and somehow acts like their thirty-year-old aunt.
  • @JimnahChakrobarty:
    Somebody has to maintain standards.
  • @BuellaChakrobarty:
    Not me.
  • @ClaudiaChakrobarty:
    I have standards.
  • @JimnahChakrobarty:
    You hired boys because they arrived early.
• @MarshallRangeCoach:
  Doug calling Jimnah “an even scarier shot” is not exaggeration.I have score sheets.
  • @JimnahChakrobarty:
    Please do not post them.
  • @MarshallRangeCoach:
    Photo shy even about targets.
  • @JourneyChakrobarty:
    She comes by that honestly.
• @FarmMomsUnite:
  The mothers all working together after Daniel died and then again when Vijaya and Jimnah nearly died is the detail outsiders keep skipping because it ruins the easy harem story.
  • @KateChakrobarty:
    Families are mostly built during the bad parts. The good parts are where you notice what you built.
  • @JourneyChakrobarty:
    That is why she was there when I needed her.
• @SalineCountyHistorian:
  People outside keep treating plural marriage here like an exotic Freehold invention. Five percent across the CCA. Eight percent here. Not majority behavior, not shocking behavior.
  • @ArrowRockArchivist:
    Exactly. Rayya’s nineteen children are notable. The existence of multiple spouses is not.
  • @MuleBarnMike:
    Nineteen kids is notable anywhere because grocery shopping becomes freight logistics.
• @LocalHRLady:
  Claudia running intake while Jimnah runs breakfast while Buella minds her own business may be the cleanest division of labor on the farm.
  • @BuellaChakrobarty:
    Finally, someone understands management.
  • @ClaudiaChakrobarty:
    You are on tomorrow’s safehouse list.
  • @BuellaChakrobarty:
    There goes my department.
• @MarshallMaja:
  For everyone abroad still trying to decide whether the Chakrobarty girls have childhoods: They have school. They have work. They have clubs. They have friends. They have crushes. They have siblings. They have chores. They have jokes. They occasionally embarrass one another in front of millions of people. Sounds tragically like teenagers.
  • @JourneyChakrobarty:
    You forgot laundry.
  • @JimnahChakrobarty:
    And breakfast.
  • @ClaudiaChakrobarty:
    And lists.
  • @BuellaChakrobarty:
    minding my own business
  • @RayyaChakrobarty:
    I believe this concludes the family briefing.
  • @DougMeyers:
    Absolutely not.