Dropping Out of School

I could have graduated High School last year. I could have done the GED during or after 9th grade. Sometimes I wish I had, but I know why it is rational that I didn't.

Your high school experience is what you yourself make of it. Are you there to socialize? Take easy classes and goof off all the time. Are you there to just "get through it"? Do only required courses and graduate early, or do the the GED. And if you do it after/during Junior year, you've been wasting your time so far and will likely waste more after. Yes it is only one more year so suck it up and get through it. If you fear bad grades, get your college stuff done early before they see anything after first term.

Or are you there to learn? Take honors and AP classes, screw required courses, you can make those up last-minute in senior year. For all of my self-motivation and drive to learning new things, had I dropped out in 9th grade I'd be nowhere near where I am now. And it's not what I learned in school that's done that (this year has been particularly dull even with 4 AP classes), but the continual exercise of my brain. I'm forced to think, or I fail. Now my brain's used to it, and I easily go through complicated material on my own that has nothing to do with what I'm doing in school, which to me has become much more of a time-waster. I want more than they can feed me, and I don't want to spend a year reviewing the past x years of grammar while cramming vocab (AP French, AP Latin) or relearning what I learned in 6th grade (most of AP Statistics).

I hate the public school system. It's broken, and needs to be replaced, not "fixed". Fundamental changes instead of tinkering with a few variables here and there. (What I'd replace it with is the subject of another discussion.) It treats the acquiring of knowledge as a day job, and thus our students are becoming bored with it and worse at it, and the "good enough" bar lowers as society strives for mediocrity. But it's still something that should be gone through.

GEDs aren't equivalent to diplomas where it counts--in the minds of employers and colleges. To employers it signals giving up because of boredom or difficulty or inability to invest long periods of time in anything, and they're not going to hire someone who might up and leave. Colleges say they don't care so much but they do; though what they're really looking for is high school graduates who have taken hard classes. Any jock can get a diploma or GED.

Finally, if you drop out of high school, that becomes a much more tempting option in anything you do later in life, jobs and colleges included. A Bachelor's Degree today is what a high school diploma used to be years ago; it's expected by most respectable (and decent-waged) jobs. High school is a relatively sweet three or four year deal if you treat your experience in it properly too. But remember most Bachelor's Degrees take another four years, all the time you're now an adult and expected to live within your means, which probably aren't much. I'm about to assume around $30k in debt just for the first year. I'll be even more screwed with paying that off if I drop out. We'll see if I can put together some money-making projects during school, but I'm not going to drop out to put all my time in them. It's a bad strategy.