People who drop out of education early

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I've seen a significant number of people who have dropped out of secondary school education, etc. I'm wondering, aspies who have quit school prematurely, why did you do it?
Is dropping out of school common amongst aspies who have been bullied throughout their childhood? I think that it's such a waste.

Ironically, do people who drop out of education early even bother to read this subforum?

I dropped out of school because the atmosphere was too overwhelming for me, the people were cruel to me, and the work was too stressful. Besides, I'm on disability and can't work a job, so why would it even matter to have an education?

To increase chances and opportunities in life, and of course get a nice set of qualifications to be proud of would be the simplest answer.
I was bullied many times, but I continued on regardless. Gotta be a little crazy to resist the kind of crap they shout at you, but I did it, and the big challenge now is college.
The work may be hard, true, which is understandable. But if one is determined and intelligent enough, they can conquer the challenges they face.
It's a shame, but alot of aspies just can't function in a society which seems so hostile, and need benefits. It comes under a credible disability, just about, but I don't believe it's favourable. That said, the majority of aspies make some sort of living for themselves.

The hardest part about going through the public education system is how contrived it all seems. It’s such a horrible environment to be in when it seems like no one cares, students, teachers, nobody. People are only there because they have to be. It’s all about going through the motions of learning. Without any kind of social support it becomes oppressive and unbearable.

I couldn't take it. I got my GED and went the community college route.

School was torture...all the way through...then after high school, my grades were so bad that I had to go to community college..where I was completely isolated...a little speck of nothing wading through this big expensive (for me) bureaucracy...I had not sense of direction...could not relate to anyone in any of my classes..had unpleasant bitter teachers who had once worked at "real" colleges and now despised their jobs....

I struggled with it for a couple of years before giving up. Money was a big issue...i had no prospects for financial aid..needed to work..it was important that i live on my own...

I adapt to my educational environment and succeed to prove myself against those stereotypes that every NT believe in about us.

I got extremely lucky and got into a science and math magnet school, where nearly everybody (if not everybody--and I mean everybody, teachers included) probably has some sort of ASD. It's made things much easier, and I'm truly thankful for it.

I can't shake the feeling that I got in by the skin of my teeth, though...

(I'm still in school, by the way.)

I didn't drop out of school, but my guess would be teenage angst in general added to oppression.

It's unfortunate. I was state schooled, and now I'm at sixth form college. Things are a great improvement upon high school.

I do not have Asperger's, but I was always quiet and somewhat precocious and attended public school until the fifth grade where I was sorta bullied by this particularly bad teacher. I had to get counseling and everything, it was a real mess. I was homeschooled after that until age sixteen, when I took classes at a community college on a part-time basis. Then at seventeen I enrolled at a four-year university as a degree-seeking student.

I can logically tell everyone to stay in school and that it's a bad idea to drop out, but I don't feel it's my place. If I didn't have my good parents as my safety net and continued public school, who's to say I wouldn't have dropped out? So, my only "advice," to students having trouble (either socially or academically) is to simply "hang in there," and it will present you with opportunities even if you didn't really learn anything.

I dropped out, I turned 18 in 11th grade attending a Christian ACE school. There are no lectures in ACE school, there are no labs in ACE school, you learn everything out of these stupid little PACE booklets, and it is mostly just busy work. It was a load of crap and I was sick of it. I got my GED that year, and no one has given me a solid reason that staying in school would have been the wiser course to take. I did what I had wanted to do for years but couldn't because my parents wouldn't let me. I don't regret it one bit. Probably one of the best decisions I've ever acted on.

Really, unless there is a scholarship or some such to look forward to, what benefit is there to hanging in there, what makes it a bad idea to drop out? I'm not interested in empty guesses and promises like "If you stick with it, it will all work out for the best", btw.

Logically, it(Dropping out) being a good or bad idea depends on the person and their situation.

Yeah, I did the drop-out-and-GED route too. Though my state has special procedures that allow you to do this easier without dropping out of school until you pass, and has laws that say that I can legally tell people that I have a high school diploma, or that I graduated from high school. So it's not so bad, really.

At that point I was just done with high school. School (except for maybe a brief period in middle school) was pretty painful and I just didn't want any part of it anymore.

After that I spent a year doing other stuff while taking a couple college classes on the side, then I started full-time again and transferred to a great university where I am right now and enjoying it tremendously, moreso than any school I've ever gone to.

At the point I left high school though, I already had a very high SAT (1500/1600) and I ended up with high college GPA (higher than high school GPA ) when I applied for transfer, so it worked out pretty good.

High school in the US is like a combination of our college/sixth form and secondary school, I think.

Basically high school - also sometimes called secondary school - has the task of preparing students to either go to technical school (usually a two year program) or to university (sometimes referred to as college in the US). I was very fortunate to find something that I really enjoy in high school and now I'm just continuing to study it in university.