Should I Drop Out Of High School?

[Bodhi]

Keep going and enjoy your senior year as much as you can. As said before, a GED is not the same as a diploma, you are so close to finishing it would be a shame to see you drop out now.

 

[gerryb]

I got my GED around the same time. It was a great decision, I wish I had done it Freshman year, it would have helped my career(technology) a lot had I done that, since I would have gotten in before it collapsed in 2001, which was the year I got my GED and went to a vocational school for computer networking/technology.

An alternative is, your high school may allow you to take college credited courses and graduate with a regular diploma. For furthering your "credentialed education", you can look into CLEP and DANTES testing. You can "test out" of a college degree if you are good at self study and test taking, for as little as $5,000 for a Bachelors.

Google CLEP, DANTES, etc.
http://www.collegeplus.org/

 

[gerryb]

Keep going and enjoy your senior year as much as you can. As said before, a GED is not the same as a diploma, you are so close to finishing it would be a shame to see you drop out now.

I LOL @ this notion.

 

[StilesBC]

Think of yourself as an investor. You're investing your time in exchange for receiving something. At first, you were told that you would receive an education, something you know you're not getting. Now, the best you can hope for is a piece of paper that says you have an education. While that might not seem very valuable now, it could be in the future. Virtually nobody knows what their life will be like at the age of 30. Most vastly misjudge what type of occupation they will want later in life. I did. I was going to be a cop, then a journalist, then in the military. I did none of those. I ended up as a tennis coach and now a small business owner/entrepreneur.

Back to investing. You have made a 12 year investment of your time. You know this has been a malinvestment and will not be worth the price paid. That's fine. But any good investor would still finish the project and try to recoup as much of the cost as possible thereafter. Just abandoning the investment right prior to completion is probably the best way to lose the most.

Stick it out. Minimize your losses. Move on to the next investment and learn from the prior mistake.

 

[emazur]

And this can be a plus or minus depending on your point of view, but the military doesn't like people with GED's:
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showth...army-discriminate-against-citizens-with-a-GED

 

[Agorism]

I wonder if Ivy league schools accept any home schoolers. Just asking.

 

[emazur]

I wonder if Ivy league schools accept any home schoolers. Just asking.

Wayne Allyn Root homeschooled his daughter and she is attending Harvard:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/spl2/homeschool-to-harvard.html

Was all the discipline and sacrifice worth it? A few days ago, Dakota Root achieved her lifelong dream. She was accepted at both Harvard and Stanford. She was also accepted at Columbia, Penn, Brown, Duke, Chicago, Cal-Berkeley, USC and several more of the elite schools in America, an unheard of record for a home-school kid. She actually had the confidence to turn down an offer from the Yale fencing coach before she had gotten her other acceptances. The kid turned down Yale!

 

[GeorgiaAvenger]

Are you insane?

A senior and you want to drop out? What a waste! Good grief put some sense in your head boy!

I once heard of this boy that dropped out the last week of school just to be cool. Might have been funny for 5 minutes, and that was it.

 

[Working Poor]

No do not quit.

 

[GeorgiaAvenger]

That ^^^

If you have a plan, then do it.

I did, in my junior year, grabbed a GED on the way out the door, and never looked back.

And in thirty years of working for a living I have never once had anybody ask to see it or ask for a copy.

And I'm in the top quintile of income earners.

That used to be not such a difficult thing to do, make a decent middle class income, without going into a quarter of a million dollars of "education" debt, which is why you need a plan, a trade that you are willing to perfect and stick at.

If you think you're going to get rich being the next google or facebook founder, forget it, you might as well just play the lottery.

But if you want to work for a living it can still be done. Plumbing, fixing cars, cooking, driving a truck may not be very glamorous, but it will still put bread on the table.

Guy, don't read this and get encouraged by somebody'a miracle. Just look at all of those kids in inner cities that don't graduate and stay in poverty their whole lives!

 

[dannno]

Think of yourself as an investor. You're investing your time in exchange for receiving something. At first, you were told that you would receive an education, something you know you're not getting. Now, the best you can hope for is a piece of paper that says you have an education. While that might not seem very valuable now, it could be in the future. Virtually nobody knows what their life will be like at the age of 30. Most vastly misjudge what type of occupation they will want later in life. I did. I was going to be a cop, then a journalist, then in the military. I did none of those. I ended up as a tennis coach and now a small business owner/entrepreneur.

Back to investing. You have made a 12 year investment of your time. You know this has been a malinvestment and will not be worth the price paid. That's fine. But any good investor would still finish the project and try to recoup as much of the cost as possible thereafter. Just abandoning the investment right prior to completion is probably the best way to lose the most.

Stick it out. Minimize your losses. Move on to the next investment and learn from the prior mistake.

Excellent analogy

 

[LibForestPaul]

Don't be asinine. Education is a credentialing service. In many cases, the more credentials you have, the more valuable you are. That's why college is important too. If you go to college you'll be able to tell people that institution x thinks you are a qualified individual. When people are hiring and don't know you personally that objective credential often signals to them that you are qualified.

Tell that to all the newly minted law school grads.

Srsly, its free, stick it out. But college, since your $$$, is another story. Maybe an Assoc degree from Comm coll. Pretty much free as well. Take english, publ speaking, some bookkeeping/accounting, and anything else that seems fun or interesting (violin, acting). After that, good luck!!!

 

[PaulConventionWV]

Do it! My political science degree helped me get a job at Burger King!

 

[osan]

I honestly feel like I'm wasting my time. I'm currently a Senior, and I'm old enough to drop out without parental permission. If I dropped out, I could get a GED and start looking for work rather than waste 8 hours each day getting a public education and learning nothing. However, I graduate in May so should I just finish up the rest of the year?

My parents don't believe in the collapse so I'm not prepared in any way for what might happen. I have no guns, and no food stored in my house. If the economy collapses within the next 12 months I won't be ready.

You are a SENIOR and considering dropping out? Are you smoking dope? Drinking?

Look, you may be wasting your time, but the diploma will allow you access to things that will not be available to you without it. Should things be like that? No. But they are.

I had a friend, Bill Rishevitz, Freehold NJ ca. 1975. He quit THREE MONTHS before graduating. We saw less and less of Bill very shortly thereafter. I do not even want to think of what his life turned into.

Stick it out. Don't be an imbecile. I promise that you will not regret it.

The only exception to this is if you have a very definite alternative of a superiority of such rarity that chances are almost less than zero that you actually have it. Even so, you are probably better off staying. I do not think you will regret staying the course.

PS: this is an invaluable exercise in finishing something you have started. Be a man and not a child. Finish it.

 

[libertybrewcity]

I would say get your degree in college so you have something to fall back on. Even if you don't use it you'll never know when you might need a second career option.

 

[CaseyJones]

finish high school and if you go to college pick a degree that requires math

 

[gerryb]

What a bunch of statists up in here! =P

Do you folks seriously believe a high school diploma is worth anything? I would have graduated in 2001. I've never been asked to see a GED/high school diploma before.

 

[Aden]

Just to clarify a few misunderstandings I've seen in this thread. You do not need to graduate high school to go to college. Any community college will accept you with a GED and a mediocre score on their silly reading/grammar/math test. The goal of EVERY person wanting to go to a four-year should be to knock out two years at a community college. This will save you tons of money. Some states, like where I go to school (VA), even mandate that four-years have to accept graduates from a community college. So if you do want to waste your life and money at college, don't let the fear tactics of, "you have to graduate to go to college," scare you.

Do whatever you want. I will say this, though, since you are wasting eight hours of your day at school, make the rest as productive as possible. Don't spend the next year hanging out with friends and playing. Get a part-time job so you can make some money and learn some skills. Even if you only work at McDonalds, you get to keep 100% of it because your parents are paying for rent and food. Do not waste this opportunity. You will not regret it.

[edit] For the record, I got a GED and had no problem getting into community college or Virginia Tech (which accepted 1 out of 4 applicants the year I applied).

 

[dejavu22]

Honestly i had a lot of the same feelings when i was in school but i went the other way. I intentionally challenged the teacher whenever possible. It pissed off a lot of the other students but i enjoyed it. In my economics class i would argue for supply side economics and in classes like history i would challenge the teacher on pretty much every "fact" the lefty spouted.

Honestly i found that it made me better at solidifying my arguments because i was approaching the conversation from the starting point that the teacher was the "expert" and i had to prove them wrong to get past their position of authority. Ultimately i think i affected many members of my class for the better but there is no way i can know that for sure.

So you could always just have fun with it maybe teach a few people yourself.

 

[roho76]

Check the homeschool laws were you live and just go that route. If your old enough to contemplate dropping out your old enough and most likely the perfect candidate to homeschool.