<p>I am 17, a high school junior. And I am lost. I do not know where to begin asking questions. So I have posted attitudes towards school which have developed over the past several months. Any advice from people who have been in similar situations would be greatly appreciated. Any advice in general would be greatly appreciated. </p>
<hr>
<pre><code>Why do I want to drop out of high school? What purpose does it serve? Or, better yet, how has high school hurt me?
Well, first off, it does not appeal to my interest in learning. The timed essays which dominate the humanities feel so contrived. I cannot fully develop a stance on any broad statement regarding the differences between northern and southern colonies in the pre-revolutionary era, let alone the darkness of mans heart. Thus, I cannot fully appreciate these assignments. Thus, they become nuisances! And forget about math and science. Mathematics cannot just be an awkward dance between notation and graphing calculator key. If it were, computers could do it all-with no chance of error. Science was not written upon two stone tablets and handed down to the scientists of yesteryear. It is by no means obvious that a force brings about all motion. And it is certainly not obvious that the gravitational force can be modeled by F_g=G\frac{m_1m_2}{r^2}. Newton was thinking when he came up with these ideas-he was modeling. He was not ascending Mount Sinai! To teach otherwise is to ignore his accomplishments and to substitute quality of education for expediency of instruction. This is a crime.
And yet I cannot break from it. It makes me a hypocrite. I say I value learning more than grades-but I end up doing (most of) my homework despite the fact that I dont need it-despite the fact that I dont need to see the same 20 faces viewed from two or three different angles to grasp the over-simplified concepts. Similarly, I end up not devoting class-time to more useful activities (e.g. finding something I am passionate about). This is all because I fear getting punishment.
I could live with the hypocrisy (saying I stand for learning while learning nothing), the cowardice. But I cannot live with what I see as my intellectual stagnation. I have learned little of significance over the past few years of my life. I have few skills-aside from those which can be applied in a testing environment (those I have in abundance). I have no worthwhile hobbies or pastimes-aside from those which are just emerging (too little, too late). The only change which I can perceive in my mind is the stifling of my optimism. And there is, of course, the passage of time. There is always that.
</code></pre>
<p>I can understand what you’re feeling, and at one point I had similar thoughts as well. However, what I concluded was that, despite my ego and pride, I do not understand the world as well as I think I do. This may come off as a bit harsh, but perhaps you’re being na</p>
<p>Just do it, man. You’re clearly too good for the system, so what you should do is visit your high school counselor and work on some sort of plan (with your parents’ support) that will let you get out of high school and move onto something more suitable to your obviously vast talents and capacities.</p>
<p>I was in the same situation about a year ago. Then I decided that just because they teach you like you’re a mindless idiot doesn’t mean you have to learn like one. When your English teacher assigns a paper, take the position opposite what she’s expecting. When you’re calculus teacher gives you a theorem, try to prove it yourself. Also, it helps to think of school as a “day job.” Unless you have an insane amount of busy work, you should have plenty of time to read Nietzsche or learn Python on your own.</p>
<p>I literally laughed out loud after skimming the thread. A mix of pseudo-poetic/literary babble written by a modern Holden Caulfield with a dash of Jay Gatsby. </p>
<p>Fine. Break away from the phony educational system and pursue your own intellectual aspirations. I mean, clearly everything they teach in school is fodder for the sheeple right? Those blindly hacking away at the calculators and the mundane essay topics… all hypocrite grade grubbers, every last one of them. Of course you don’t need to do homework assignments to understand the “mundane concepts” of the world. You’re just rotting in there, your great intellect stagnating under the weight of the world’s hypocrisy, surrounded by those who cannot share in your vision of enlightenment. </p>
<p>Or not. </p>
<p>I literally LOL’ed. Let me say that again, I laughed out loud. In my 2700+ posts on CC, I’ve only laughed a few times, and this was the first time where the OP was not trying to be funny. If I knew this was a satire, it’d be less hilarious. The gravity of your tone only made it funnier. This should be an article on The Onion or something. LOL… “Science was not written upon two stone tablets and handed down to the scientists of yesteryear.”??? ***? Why not? The point of formulating new knowledge is to build up on concepts that our predecessors discovered and refined before us. It’s up to us to learn what has been recorded thus far on the “tablets” and possibly write a line of it of our own discoveries. </p>
<p>Anyway, your thread was funny and I vote it one of the best in 2010.</p>
<p>Most people drop out of high school for reasons like yours, except they have other talents/passions that they pursue. It seems like you aren’t particularly good at anything besides testing…</p>
<p>Other things people have done: farmed, wrote a book, got a job, went to community college (dual enrollment, or fully enrolled and then transfered/got a degree), or they sucked it up.</p>
<p>Or you can PM Warts for advice on homeschooling/online school. It offers more flexibility and freedom and she started junior year too.</p>
<p>
On a more random note, is it more common to say “Anyways” or “Anyway”? Is there a right way? I never know which to use. Same with “toward” vs. “towards”.</p>
<p>You’ve got a few options. Become a drop-out genius and vie for a chance of the high life–become Bill Gates squared (considering he dropped out of college and you would do the same to high school). You would become a millionaire, if not billionaire. Obviously, the chance of that happening is about as much as the chance that I’ll do my homework tonight (next to nada). You could drop-out, and become an under-appreciated carpenter deriving formulas in his head yet earning a meager 22 grand.</p>
<p>Or you could suck it up (much like us all), go to college, and stand a good chance of making six figs.</p>
<p>As an aside, I really appreciate what you are saying. Understanding is being sacrificed for information.</p>
<p>Anyway is correct. Both toward and towards are correct, but toward is more commonly used in the US (with towards more common in the UK). Anyways is not correct.</p>
It’s probably the dumbest thing to do. I know people who eventually finished h.s. while working through a GED (g. Equivalent Diploma). The GED choice followed years of hard times. Doing their GED, they had to juggle work and babies to compete with their still-silly homework assignments. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>Rent a copy of “Five Easy Pieces” starring Jack Nicholson, his break-out film about someone who didn’t pursue higher education, although he was a talented musician.</p></li>
<li><p>Imagine having the same convo as in your OP with other people flipping burgers. If you think they are 50 years old, someday you’ll be, too.</p></li>
<li><p>Read “Nickled and Dimed” by Barbara Ehrenreich and imagine yourself living the day-to-day, hand-to-mouth workweek of many Americans who lack a high school diploma.</p></li>
<li><p>Don’t compare your prospects with older adults or immigrants who have to work, by necessity, without a h.s. diploma. At your age, if you’re privileged to have been born in the U.S., as a h.s. dropout your job and social status will be equivalent to someone who’s in a street gang or left Middle or High School due to pregnancy.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>There are choices and there are choices. Dropping high school is a terrible choice.</p>
<p>I don’t get it. If you were such an overachiever, you would do the work, like it, and move on to higher stuff. Dropping out (quitting) sounds more like an underachiever to me…</p>
<p>While I SOMEWHAT understand where you are coming from, you sound like a pretentious jerk.</p>
<p>Chances are you aren’t as brilliant as you think.</p>
<p>Chances are you HAVE learned.</p>
<p>A lot of school (and life) is what you make out of it. Read books on your time. Do math equations on your own time. Let’s say you are extremely smart and are bored by school–find other things to occupy yourself with…</p>
<p>Stop whining. Stop being so elitist. SUCK IT UP.</p>
<p>I really hope you aren’t saying this things out loud, because you’d be the biggest prick.</p>
<p>Anyway, while I understand somewhat, school has probably done more for than you know–and hey, it’s a place to meet people and exchange ideas. No one likes in-class essays, but we don’t all whine about it. </p>
<p>Just finish up HS and apply to college. Please stop your bombastic language and pompous tone, as well. It’s unnecessary. Or you can drop out and stop talking about being a hypocrite or coward.</p>
<p>Sorry to be harsh, but IDK how else to convey how stupid your post came across as.</p>