I'm on the verge of dropping out of high school. Any ideas from both sides?

[Reiten]

It's hard to say from your vague post about what you want to do. If you're thinking about getting hired in the IT industry you need either a degree collage/university or actual work experience. If you don't have either of those you'll have a really hard time getting past the initial screening for jobs.

 

[HaloEliteLegend]

Take the hard path now so you can have an easy life later. Don't take the easy way and drop out, because more likely than not, you're going to doom yourself to a much harder life later. Especially for IT, my dude! IT is crazy hot right now, and you'll be competing with people who've graduated high school, college, achieved a masters, and have internship and work experience under their belt. I'm gonna be very blunt: when you're up against that kinda competition, if you don't even have a high school diploma, you're fucked. STAY IN SCHOOL!

 

[Spectral Blizzard]

DONOTDROPOUTYOUWILLLIVEATERRIBLEANDMISERABLELIFSODONOTDROPOUTIWILLBEWATCHINGYOU

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DOYOUHEARME

 

[The Catboy]

On one hand, most jobs require at least a high school education. On the other hand, high school is a complete waste of time and you will literally never use anything from it in the real world.
Basically just stick it out for use on your future job applications. It sucks, it’s pointless, and honestly you will never use anything you learned from it. But jobs like to see that you finished it.

 

[Gizametalman]

passport is very expensive dude XD
also they would give an apartment, money for bills and food and such?????

I think it was kind of an American College, where you go and live with roommates and stuff.

 

[lordkaos]

don't do it, that will possibly limit the options you can choose from in the future.

 

[Blood Fetish]

high school is a complete waste of time and you will literally never use anything from it in the real world

The only situation in which this would be even remotely true is if you intended to work solely in low-skill jobs for the rest of your life. Even then you would need to have basic literacy and numeracy for day-to-day things like paying bills, entering contracts, planning any sort of retirement, etc.

 

[Gizametalman]

I would strongly consider not, or at least only augmenting whatever they get in a more conventional setup.
1) It is a lot of effort. If it is what you want to dedicate your life to doing then so be it but I would want to live my own life too. I like learning things but realistically you are not going to get your kid to the point where you are both learning things together before many years have passed, much less if you also decide to space them out a bit.
2) As good as you are there may be someone better.
3) School does teach more what is in lessons. A bit one being the ability to socialise and deal with other people.
4) To do it well is quite expensive. To kit out even a modest lab and workshop takes quite a bit. I go through phases of books and practical learning but kids spend far more time wanting practical. Or if you prefer would you have preferred to read about elephant toothpaste or see a mess get made?

Now if you can put together your own setup with a few friends this can change quite quickly.

Ah, I see. I don't want to abuse of your kindness and take more of your time, so I'll have your words in mind when the time comes.
Honestly? Been planning their early years for years, want them to speak two languages by the age of 4 and learn all the necessary things for their future careers.
Thanks for your reply.

 

[The Catboy]

The only situation in which this would be true is if you intended to work solely in low-skill jobs for the rest of your life. Even then you would need to basic literacy and numeracy for day-to-day things like paying bills, planning any sort of retirement, etc.

If your age is true, then you went to school in a different era. The current education system has been boiled down to memorializing basic facts in order to repeat them on state tests. You really don’t learn anything that useful with the current education system.
You don’t learn about taxes, apply for jobs, home loans, leases, etc., you don’t learn how voting system works, or really anything. I could go on all day with the basic skills/knowledge that the current system fails to provide and it’s only getting worse. But you will learn the basic structure to cells.

 

[Blood Fetish]

The claim that schooling has been dumbed down for the lowest common denominator was around when I was a student, and most certainly before that as well. I absolutely believe that skipping high school would have massive negative consequences beyond failing to "check a box" on a job application. Ideally, with education and experience, OP would progress his career to the point that he no longer works in positions that require job applications at all.

 

[RepeatingDigits]

Look, buddy. I'm gonna cut to the chase.

You drop out of HS, it's not the end of the world of course. But say good bye to any job with good payment unless you have contacts or start drug-dealing.
Why would you even drop out of HS when it's the easiest shit ever. If I could get through HS no problem there's no reason whatsoever you couldn't do the same. (And considering you're from Hungary there's a good chance your IQ is much higher than mine just going by geographical statistics.)
Just finish the damn thing, there are no advantages whatsoever of being a HS dropout.

Now college is a whole different story, I don't know how it is over there, but from what I gather from people that lives in USA college has become somewhat of a worthless commodity these days that's only good for draining money from your family. And then you have the fact that Billy G, Steve Jobs and others were college dropouts. I myself am in college ONLY because in my country there's the perception that if you don't get a degree you're useless, which is simply not true. In Hungary this may not be as prevalent and I'd say you have about a 60%+ chance of living the dream without any college education whasoever, if you are really good at what you do.

Oh and don't worry, it's all downhill from here!

 

[Haloman800]

I would stay to get your diploma, but don't bother with university.

Most likely, a high school degree will be useless, but in the slight chance it isn't, you'll have one.

I got mine and have never needed it for both my careers (insurance agency & real estate investor)

 

[jpx86]

I know people can cite examples of people that became rich even after dropping out of high school or college, but these are the exceptions. Unless you have already developed something like Windows, Facebook, etc. and you are quitting to push it to market, then you are not going to be one of those people. You can also argue that being rich doesn't bring happiness, but I can tell you that not having to worry about money makes life a LOT easier and more enjoyable.

You mention you want to stream as a hobby. How are you going to afford the games and equipment to stream? How are you going to afford Internet service? How are you going to afford a place to live? How will you pay for electricity? Food? Without even a high school education, you will likely make the minimum wage required by law. Paying for basic necessities is going to be close to impossible working hard for 40 hours a week at that wage. You can work more, but then when will you have time or energy to stream? So maybe you can work hard and get a raise - unlikely, there will be an endless stream of people with better credentials than you that will get selected for promotions/positions that you want.

Sure, you can always get a GED or whatever the equivalent is to that. Don't fall for that trap. When most people hear that you have a GED, they only hear "High school dropout." It really doesn't matter the reason either. All people will hear is that you dropped out of high school. Even if you have great reasons that were beyond your control, most people will never bother to find out why. They simply won't care. They will just assume you are dumb and lazy.

Forget about working in IT. Consider being on the hiring end of the situation. If you post a job opening online, then you will easily get 100 resumes. You get overwhelmed and don't want to spend too much time on deciding on who to bring in for an interview. One of the easiest ways to start is by throwing out all the resumes that don't have a college degree on them. The workforce is becoming more educated, and it is too easy to hire only people that at least finished college.

If you are in your first year of high school, then you only have 4 more and 4 of college. 8 years (maybe less) is not a long time to work hard and set yourself up for the rest of your life. By the time you are done with college, you will probably live another 50-60 years on average. You are sacrificing a small amount of time to make your life so much better for all that time. Or, you can be lazy today and have it easier for the next 8 years compared to your peers, but then suffer for the next 50-60 years.

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Now college is a whole different story, I don't know how it is over there, but from what I gather from people that lives in USA college has become somewhat of a worthless commodity these days that's only good for draining money from your family.

You are very misinformed about college in the USA. The college degree has become the new high school degree here.

 

[The Catboy]

The claim that schooling has been dumbed down for the lowest common denominator was around when I was a student, and most certainly before that as well. I absolutely believe that skipping high school would have massive negative consequences beyond failing to "check a box" on a job application. Ideally, with education and experience, OP would progress his career to the point that he no longer works in positions that require job applications at all.

I am not telling the OP to drop out, I am pointing out that high school is useless in the real world. This is often more true with people who have interest in the IT field, as most public high schools tend to be pretty horrible when covering the IT field. If the OP really wants to be IT, then they should go to a trade school that specializes in that field. Otherwise the most high schools just briefly cover IT.
So a better suggestion is look into a different school that covers their interests. If the OP is really dedicated to getting into the IT world, then public school simply isn't going to cut for them. They need to take actual courses with actual experts in the field, as well go a school that can help them get into the right college for IT. Public high school isn't made for that kind of dedicated job skill and actually is a waste of time for the OP.

 

[lostboysteve]

I dropped out senior year, got a ged the next week and “graduated” sooner than most of my friends. I am in a trade and spent a lot of time learning on my own. I wouldn’t recommend dropping out unless you are very well skilled in a trade.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Quantumcat]

Whether a job requires a high school diploma or not isn't really relevant. An employer wants someone who is capable of learning and can work hard. Dropping out of school labels you as stupid and unable to cope with challenges. No one wants to hire someone like that. If you do drop out, you're going to have to constantly explain the circumstances, and if they don't think it was a good enough reason you'll go straight to the bottom of the pile. Even if they do think it was a good reason there will be plenty of applicants who are baggage free and they'll just pick one of them.

It will take you years to find an acceptable job, meanwhile you'll be working at maccas or in a supermarket, competing with the thousands of other people who made bad decisions like you did, fighting over minimum wage and barely able to get food on the table. Even when you find a proper job, it'll be way below the bottom of the ladder and promotion is going to be painfully slow. In ten years you'll probably get to where you would have walked in at with a university degree. You may not even ever find a good job and you'll be earning minimum wage all your life. You'll be 60 and have no hope of a proper retirement because you had no money to save and then live out the remainder of your unhappy life on welfare. That's if you even make it to that age and don't die of some preventable disease first, which you can't afford to treat because there's no universal healthcare and you couldn't afford insurance.

Think carefully. You only have to struggle through a couple of years, then you could have a reasonably comfortable life. Or, you could take the easy path now, and condemn yourself to a lifetime of poverty and misery. Your call.

Edit: I should also mention that working in the IT industry requires constant upskilling. My work pays for me to do 1 or 2 courses a year in the technology we use, to keep up to date with the newest features. This is pretty normal. While you're not employed you would have to keep doing courses so that your skills match the current demand. You're not going to get very far if you're an expert in COBOL and BASIC and mainframes and you know nothing about C sharp or Java. Working in IT requires you to be better than average at learning. If you are unable to learn the very basics that every human needs to learn, they're going to assume you won't be capable of doing the extra learning IT requires - so you'll be rejected before they've made it past the second line in your resumé.

 

[FAST6191]

You're not going to get very far if you're an expert in COBOL

Legacy skills bring in the big money these days. A couple of years back they were dragging COBOL programmers out of retirement with payments of something you might mistake for a telephone number and considering it a bargain. k&r era C is also getting pretty lucrative (companies that dodged the scourge of COBOL and got in before Java caused a likely centuries long headache now find themselves with a skills pool of C99 and above) and of the modern stuff then FPGAs at the high frequency trading level are about the only things similarly lucrative. At the same time a few soon to be graduates realised this and trained themselves up.

I should also say training is quite often neglected in Europe, and Hungary is a special case within that (it has cheap enough labour but good enough access and tech that a lot of electronics manufacture happens out there bringing some parallels to India and China).

Anyway I have occasionally met people with serious serious skills well outside normal feeders (especially in that part of the world) for such things and age is not necessarily a factor. Bonus for the OP is if they are in Hungary then nobody wants to go there really (compared to say someone in France, Germany, UK, Nordic countries and maybe Italy or Spain where people will happily pack up and move around) and physics does not care about country borders. Alternatively if the OP has a nice app that is taking off (in general or relative to country standards) then sitting in school for a day can cut into time able to manage that. The option to bank the sort of money you get in a couple of years ($1400 AUD a month https://tradingeconomics.com/hungary/wages ) and then finish school (or get an equivalent) later is not an untenable platform*.
On the flip side I more commonly meet the thing where someone learns to swap hard drives, screens, reformat machines, maybe set up a raspberry pi to do something cool, run a wire for a CCTV setup (I imagine you can finish the list of local IT shop standard services) and get paid what is good money in school for that (easily several times what your friends doing nights, holidays and Saturdays either bored out of their skulls or putting in hard graft in a retail shop will make, even more if you go per hour, and with the flexibility of your time to boot).

*consider it another way. I as a 16 year old get a sizeable inheritance and invest it to become a landlord (not of a pub). "what a smart young person you are" is the expected comment from many. Functionally I can see some parallels and equivalents.

Hence myself and others trying to extract what position the OP is in.

 

[tatripp]

My question to you is:
I've planned pretty much all the life of my kids, I still don't have any, but I really want TO school them at home.
Teach them everything, from Kindergarden to Highschool and even College studies.
So, do you recommend me to take that path with my kids?
And if you think I shouldn't, why not?

I believe, that Home School will aid them to learn better and faster than attending school every single day for 20+ years.

TL;DR
Home school=good but often makes kids socially awkward
Public school=good for motivated individuals. You get out what you put in. Experts can help advance your thinking. Very bad peers sometimes that can be negative influence.

First off, I see that you are from Mexico. I will speak from my experience which is that from a middle class American. I don't think schools are useless. Frequently they suck, but I have learned things in school that I would not have learned on my own otherwise. I have also taken classes that were a complete waste of time. At the public school where I teach, it seems that the school is as useful as the students make it. Most of the students care more about the diploma than knowledge so they aim for good grades rather than learning the material. In high school, students get to pick most of their classes, so they can decide what they want to take and how advanced the courses will be (honors, AP, etc.). The students who really want to work hard will benefit a lot from school because schools do have experts. You will get out what you put in when it comes to US public schools. A very motivated person who works hard will be successful whether they are homeschooled or if they attend public school.
Next, I feel that it is important to mention that my girlfriend is from Mexico. She lived in Mexico City for a few years, speaks fluent Spanish and English, and is culturally both Mexican and American. She was also homeschooled by her parents for most of her schooling. She isn't weird, but most people who have been homeschooled most of their life are very weird and have no social skills. School definitely helps socialize kids. It isn't impossible to socialize them without school, but it is a lot harder. You should have them involved in sports and activities in town. They still have to interact with other children. Despite being a public school teacher, we are planning on homeschooling our children for at least a few years. We plan on homeschooling them during their middle school years because the middle schools in our area are horrible.

 

[smileyhead]

Home school=good but often makes kids socially awkward

What if I already am socially awkward?
I've heard homeschooling is basically you studying by yourself at home, which sounds nice at first, but you have to write a test every half a semester from every subject, which sounds pretty difficult and scary to me.

 

[BlueFox gui]

What if I already am socially awkward?
I've heard homeschooling is basically you studying by yourself at home, which sounds nice at first, but you have to write a test every half a semester from every subject, which sounds pretty difficult and scary to me.

i wanted homeschool lol i'm already socially akward too hahahaha XD