Dropping Out of High School

There I said it. Even a lot of my closest friends don't know that about me. Most likely because I come off as an intelligent and educated person, which I am. But when you hear those badly stereotyped words "high school dropout" what do you think of? Losers, stoners, and minimum wage job workers? A lot of people that end up dropping out of high school DO end up this way but for the most part they were already that way before they started.

What I am here to talk about is how I dropped out of high school the SMART WAY. I went on to get my Associates degree within two years and another one during my time in the Air Force. I still haven't finished my Bachelor's but that's only because I didn't play the game as intelligently as I would have liked and was held up by a few roadblocks along the way(some family, some monetary, and some that were of my own imagination). Nonetheless, if you are even a reasonably intelligent person, you can learn from my mistakes and realize this is an option for you. Especially if you have supportive parents like I had.

It all began when I realized I was just drifting through high school aimlessly. I was staying up late at night(much like I still do now), barely covering my homework, falling asleep in class and just basically half-assing it. I was an intelligent kid; I had been in academically gifted and college prep courses all my life and my family usually put me in some kind of summer activity or course here and there to stimulate me through the years. I guess I had just become disillusioned with high school and started feeling a bit distracted by this or that for whatever particular reason.

My father had dropped out of high school when he was around my age. He went on to do the same thing I was destined to do, which is one of the reasons I decided to go through with it. He dropped out, got his GED, got an Associate's from the local community college, then went on to transfer to a four-year school. He had done it, encouraged me to do it, and gave me his blessing and experience to guide me through it. He had wanted me to do it from the time I was 14 but it wasn't legally possible at that time so I always kind of kept it on the backburner of my mind for the next couple of years.