
Ask HN: Should I drop out of high school? - 6210xi
Hi, I'm a sophomore in a fairly good high school with a 5.1 GPA. I recently realized that most of the classes I'm taking (all honors) are kinda pathetic. Because the classes I take are easy and not relevant, I don't put forth any effort. My school specializes in athletics, and I want to start a business or go to college now, and start learning more. What I've seen is that in high school academia, is that it's really ~70% of the time spent pleasing other people or rapid memorization that I won't use in my life after high school. I'm really passionate about what I want to do, and I'm ready to go through with my decision. So is it worth it to take classes at my community college and get a GED to go to another college, or should I change my mentality and try in my classes and graduate early?
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jseliger
No.

If you can, find a program like Washington State's Running Start:
<http://www.k12.wa.us/RunningStart/default.aspx> .

Read pg's _What You'll Wish You'd Known_: <http://paulgraham.com/hs.html> and
pay attention to the part about treating high school like your day job.

 _I'm really passionate about what I want to do, and I'm ready to go through
with my decision._

You're passionate about what you do now -- but you may not be in six months,
two years, or six years. If you don't even have a HS diploma, you'll be
unfairly hamstrung in terms of your options then. Note that you might be
passionate about what you're doing now and you might be passionate about doing
what you're doing 60 years from now. But you might not be. To use pg's
metaphor, try to stay upwind. And if you want to learn more, read more. School
ends at 3:00. You still have a lot of time to do what you will.

In addition -- no offense -- there is a reasonably high chance that you think
you know more than you do. I'm not trying to say this to be an asshole -- I'm
saying it because you won't be the first high school student to think you're
wildly more competent, capable, or intelligent than you are. I run into
students like that all the time and told a story about one here:
[http://jseliger.com/2010/10/02/how-to-get-your-
professors%E2...](http://jseliger.com/2010/10/02/how-to-get-your-
professors%E2%80%99-attention-or-how-to-get-the-coaching-and-mentorship-you-
need) . You might also be the next Bill Gates, but the odds are good that
you're not. If you drop out of high school because of what people on the
Internet tell you, you may mess your life up in substantial ways that won't be
easy to undo.

 _and I want to start a business or go to college now, and start learning
more._

These are somewhat vague goals: if you said, "Here's the URL for my business
and where I want to go with it" or "I want to learn X, Y, and Z in college,"
you'd have a more compelling case. As it is, what the other posters have said
is mostly good advice: work toward getting into college sooner, rather than
later. I will also say that you might be able to get more out of high school
classes than you think if you try hard enough to.

Good luck.

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geuis
Absolutely NOT. Take as many AP classes as you can. They are generally college
level. You will find it much easier to get into the schools you really want if
you actually graduate. Despite what people may say, GED's don't carry the same
social weight as diplomas. A high school diploma is itself nothing more than
to say that you passed the base level of societal education, but many people
consider a GED to mean that you we're not even capable of achieving that low-
level rung.

Do what you can to graduate early. THAT looks good. If you can finish in 2 or
2.5 years what takes most of us 4 years, and you can do it with a very high
GPA, that's just all gold stars right there.

The other thing to keep in mind about graduating with a diploma is that of
grants and scholarships. College is going to be _fucking expensive_. I'm
assuming you're 15-17 years old. So you might not understand what fucking
expensive really means in your bones, beyond "that's a lot of money". Don't
take this as an insult or anything. I'm 30 years old and it took until I was
like 27 to really, really understand how much "fucking expensive" really is.
For me it was moving from South Florida where I was making at most $30k to SF
where I've been making 2.5-3x that much as a salary.

Anyway, grants and scholarships are free money you don't have to pay back
later. And when you're 25 looking to start a career and whatnot, you'll really
appreciate not having massive loan payments to pay on a monthly basis.

I'm currently in the middle of my 2nd startup, and since you are here on HN
I'll put my argument in those terms. Look at high school as your first
startup. The only way its going to succeed is based on how much work and
sacrifice you're willing to put into it. If you can make it through that, many
other things in your life will be much easier.

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pg
You may find some ideas in this that apply to your situation:
<http://paulgraham.com/hs.html>

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noodle
why not just put forth enough effort to do well in your classes, and in your
spare time, teach yourself how to do what you want to learn to do and start a
business?

if you find high school trivial, you'll find community college isn't much
better. and while university will be tougher, the curriculum is on rails.
you'll find that once you graduate you may or may not have actually learned
anything about what you really wanted to learn about.

experience is best.

~~~
alttab
I can't upvote this comment enough.

Elitism aside, high school curriculums are a joke. It will be easy, it will be
a waste of time, and you probably won't learn much if you've already learned
how to solve complex problems in abstract and invisible ways (programming).

That said, run the course and finish high school with a high GPA. Get the best
technical degree from a college you can (of course money is an issue here,
scholarships?) with some internships and a high-paced position at a growing
start up and you'll be way on your way to success.

THOSE things said, take your spare energy and time to learn things that school
or college won't teach you. For me, this was game programming, web design,
n-teir architectures, SQL, databases, and web applications. None of this I
learned in school, and I have a CS degree and graduated at the top of my
class. Most well paying jobs with good opportunities require CS degress, but
the Java-shop mentality they provide simply aren't enough to be successful.

Use your education as accreditation to get the attention you need from
employers, and use your untapped potential and extra energy to gain the
experience you need to stand out on a resume be an above-and-beyond
contributor (I did this with experimental iPhone game development, web app
development, check out www.scotthconner.com to see the projects I think fall
under this category).

Finishing high-school is a must. Learning how to learn quickly and get shit
done with little fuss is vital. Having a list of reasons you didn't finish
school will count against you in every case.

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kochbeck
I was in an early entrance program to U of North Texas back when highly-
organized early entrance was a (very) newfangled creation. If you qualify for
a large, on-campus early entrance program with plenty of kids your own age,
you ought to go for it. If you Google for early entrance college, you'll find
plenty of information.

The criteria for acceptance after 20-odd years of development of these
programs correlates surprisingly well with whether or not someone your age
ought to be in a more adult, independent setting. Thus, if you are accepted,
that's a pretty good indicator that you're ready to go to the next level. If
you aren't accepted, then you're probably not.

Having said that, you say that 70% of high school is spent pleasing other
people and performing tasks of rote memorization that you don't think you'll
ever use again. I have terrible news for you: 90% of most employment is about
pleasing other people and rote memorization. Often the rote memorization is
about memorizing the things that please other people so you can plan on doing
them over and over again. In technical terms, it's called satisficing
behavior. In real terms, it's why people demand to get paid to do their jobs.

Seriously though, early entrance. If you don't like high school and you can
make it into something else, go for it. Go be with kids like you who want to
do bigger things sooner. If it's appropriate for you, it's worth doing.

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seasoup
You don't need to drop out of high school to start a business. Do both at the
same time.

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spokey
No.

Just to add to the list of alternatives, I don't know where you live but
several states have some sort of "talented and gifted" magnet school that
might be more challenging/engaging for you. Many cities do as well, but you're
probably well aware of local options.

There's also Bard College at Simon's Rock which accepts rising high school
juniors and gives them a BA in 4 years (and is affiliated with a top tier
liberal arts college). The timing for that is just about right.

Also, you may be interested to learn more about the "unschooling" movement.
Some variation of that might be a good fit for you. Google "unschooling" or
"John Taylor Gatto" for some background info.

Other people in this thread have discussed the drawbacks of a GED rather an a
high school diploma, so I thought I'd share this one little anecdote:

One of my classmates in high school happened to have skipped a lot more grades
than most. He was 12 in his junior year of high school, so I guess that made
him 14 or 15 when he started college and around 19 when he graduated from
undergrad.

He was a great kid. Clearly ridiculously smart but very modest and soft
spoken. Everyone seem to like him. But he didn't really have "friends" per se.
Everyone was nice to him, but everyone treated him like a kid brother.

I ran into him at our 15 year high school reunion and we had a long chat.
Looking back on it as a happy, successful and established adult, one thing he
clearly regretted about his life is that he never really had a college or a
high school "experience", he just went to classes. And he regretted it.

My point is that there is more to the high school experience than what you're
being taught in class. Sure, you can skip it, but be aware that you're trading
away something with real value, sometimes even when it doesn't seem like it
is. I don't think that should make your decision for you, but it's another
thing to throw on the "no" side of the scales.

Also, I think the deck is generally stacked against you as 15 year old high
school drop out trying to succeed as an entrepreneur. Gaining a little bit
more life experience (quite possibly doing fun and exciting things that aren't
like high school) might make you a better entrepreneur. You'll understand your
customers, partners and employees better.

(inb4 "Fool, YC has had several successful 18/19 year old founders." I know.
That's not the same situation as this.)

~~~
johnswamps
I'm an alumnus of Simon's Rock and highly recommend it. I went in thinking I
would get my AA and transfer but I stayed for my BA. I'd be happy to answer
any questions about the school.

It's technically still considered dropping out of high school though :)

------
arn
There are a lot of social benefits to going into college at a typical age.
Your social circles in college will be severely affected if you are much
younger than everyone else.

I don't see the rush. I'm sure there are certain cases where it makes sense to
skip ahead, but sounds like it's not a slam dunk in your case. Start a
business in high school? Maybe enjoy the ride.

~~~
dmlorenzetti
This was my father's view. Based on his negative feelings about having gone
through school ahead of his age cohort, he didn't let any of his kids skip
grades.

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middlegeek
You should absolutely not drop out. Leave high school with a diploma, no
matter what.

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iworkforthem
Do your best to stay in classes and graduate early. At the same time, you can
work on something on the side. Time management is something that they dun
teach in school. If things work out for your side project, hire someone to run
things for you. That's something that they dun teach in school too. School is
the place for you to meet people, social and build network. They will come in
useful in the future.

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mmaro
Things to consider:

1) If you drop out (to work on a business), nobody's making you jump through
hoops every day any more. It can take about a year to adjust to this. You'll
probably be doing nothing useful for a while.

2) Doing real things in the real world is much, much harder than it looks. If
you don't have visible achievements that make you employable, don't drop out.

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raquela
Does being in school make you miserable? If so, compare that feeling to the
way you think you would feel if the worst that could happen if you drop out
actually happens. If the risk of dropping out doesn't bother you, there's your
answer.

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brudgers
Today, start applying for early admission to colleges and universities.

In the short term, stay in school and don't use "it's pathetic" as an excuse
for poor performance in your classes.

The better your grades, the better your chance of early admission.

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maxklein
If you give up on this now, you'll be giving up your whole life.

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rodericksilva
Keep kicking ass and get yourself in the best university possible. Like Noodle
said "teach yourself" the other skills.

Find your passion and then go hard!

------
silverlake
Take college courses at night. That's what I did in high school.

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grandalf
I think you should quit. Just self-teach, sit in on college courses to learn
what you want to learn, and forge ahead.

Just be sure to set the bar high on the skills you self-teach, and go out of
your way to find others like yourself who are motivated to skip the 6-10 year
period of extended adolescence that our culture grants young adults to "find
themselves".

Finding some people who you can collaborate with and who are roughly at the
same stage as you socially/developmentally will help make life fun and
exciting... and I've found that people who are roughly the same age tend to
come to trust each other more easily, which is important in many business
contexts.

If I had it to do over again I'd strongly consider dropping out of HS and
focusing on learning and doing really cool stuff for a few years, possibly
including a bit of travel to get a more global perspective, then when you're
18-23ish be sure to head to a college town find some interesting people who
are in college and maybe sit in on a few of their classes or even enroll for a
term or two as a non-degree / part time student to meet people and get a taste
of the college experience.

When I think back to all the mind numbing hours of high school and all the
stupid social stuff I don't wish it on anyone. It's way overrated. If you're
not a jock you're just learning how to be content being a second class
citizen, which is not a skill anyone should learn.

~~~
JesseAldridge
Hmm, this is well-written yet downvoted to -2. I think grandalf is right.

School is supposed to be about knowledge, but more and more it's becoming
about going through the motions to get an overvalued piece of paper. You could
take those many hours you would waste in school and put them to more
productive use: building cool stuff, learning about more important things,
etc. There's not much school can teach you that Wikipedia can't. I think
having an impressive portfolio would be _way_ more valuable than an Ivy League
diploma.

I dropped out of college after two years. My parents gave me what was left of
my college fund (about $20,000) and I lived off that for a few years. I have
yet to hit profitability, but I think I will. And I know I've learned more on
my own than I would've learned in school. And if I had to, I think the stuff
I've built and the skills I've gained would make it easy enough to get a
decent job. Maybe you could make a similar deal with your parents (they give
you the money they would've spent on college and you live off of it for
several years).

You definitely need to solve the money issue somehow. If you don't have it,
you're liable to get stuck in a dead end job. And you definitely shouldn't do
this unless you've got what it takes to educate yourself and do good work
without someone forcing you to.

Probably the most important thing you get out of school and college is
interacting with other smart people on a regular basis. Find some other way of
doing that and you should be good.

