Fellow Aspies: Did you drop out of HS? Why?

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I didn't drop out, but I was miserable in high school and I attempted to find ways to get out of school early. Actually considered taking a GED instead, and was finally able to convince the district to let me take a few college courses online in lieu of my last few extra credits in high school. I was uncomfortable and undiagnosed. I can understand why someone would want to get out of high school as soon as possible.

Yes, for several reasons.
Mostly home life was not supportive. Shcool work was also very hard as most time it didn't make sence. I needed my parentes to help me learn...
If school was only math and science then I could have delt with it.
Another reason is languge is so difuclt - writing, reading, talking and listening.

It has nothing to do with my ablity to learn. With the Internet I can find different explanations of the same leasson, and I can learn easily. But am slow only because I can not read fast.

When I was with my children, they were homeschooled along with public schools. My kids ended up being put on a different grading scale. They had to work so much harder to make the same grade as others. Mostly all I did was find how each thought and reviewed the school work. Then the school gave me teachers books so I could teach them ahead of the class and then my kids became assitant teachers for thier classes.
If my parents did that for me, I could have graduated high school and college. In reality it seems this kind of thinking is not mormal - I am autistic after all.

I might as well have, but luckily for the sake of paperwork, I have a high school diploma from a special school I attended until I was 16. I returned to public high school, and basically was only enrolled and rarely showed up for the 11th & 12th grades. This is a terrible example for an adult to write with any influence it may have, but honestly I missed nothing, and have no regrets about it. My academics in middle school were already testing at university level, and that's owed to my mother and grandfather, who were both military school teachers. My fundamentals were taught at home, and EARLY. I'm not saying it's OK to leave school for any reason, but I am saying that sometimes things can be looked at in different ways. I pity anyone with autism who tries to succeed at a public school; whether or not involving a special ed program. And further, I pity anyone NT who is stuck in a California public school system. By 12th grade, they might be able to read "See the cat run", and add 3 + 2.

Charles

Middle and High School is the worst. I had zero friends until my senior year. I did only the minimal attendence without getting expelled, and I spent most of the day writing my own stories and drawing my own comic book, and scraped by with C's. My teachers hated me, and quite frankly my attitude did suck. It drove my Japanese father and rather high acheiving, hard working mother up the wall. It gets much better with college, at least for me, because you are able to take classes that somewhat relate to your special interest, and in most ways you have more freedom. If you do want to socialize, you are more likely to find people who share some of your interests. There are still bigots and a**holes out there, but they are a lot less likely to physically threaten you.

Well said. I too hit the test ceilings but received all F and D grades from 3rd grade on. I couldn't cope with the education style of public school. Everything I've learned has been on my own. And I think I know the type of "special school" you went to. In 9th grade I was finally kicked out of regular high school and sent to the one for 'delinquents'. The only time I enjoyed school was at this 'special school' where the faculty actually treated the students like human beings and worked with each student to come up with an education plan they can cope with and enjoy. The student population there was low and I found it was full of kids who just had problems. They weren't stupid or crazy, they just had problems that nobody in those days was willing to deal with. Anyway, the next year the school was shut down for lack of funding and I got my GED.

These days it not just the CA school systems. Schools across the country are turning out 80%+ of their population with test scores below the basic requirement for math and english, and the requirements have been lowered over the years to try to hide the fact that schools have become centers for detention rather than centers for education. When society spends 3 times on prisons what it spends on education it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize where the priorities are. Sadly it's almost impossible to get rid of the teachers and management who continue to administer failed policies year after year.

Yes, I dropped out.

In high school, I attended three different schools in a four year span. In grade twelve, there was a group of freshmen boys who decided to make my life Hell. Between the moving, the upheaval at home, and the little sh!ts at school, I was finally sick of it.

I got a GED. Later, I went to a community college where I obtained an A.A. in liberal arts and graduated with a 3.8 GPA (would've had a 4.0 but I got lazy and didn't turn in a term paper). Now, I'm currently enrolled in an A.S. of applied health science, which I eventually intend to roll into an EMT/paramedic training program.

GED =/= the end of the world.

Yes and No....

I stayed home most of my Senior year. Academics was not a problem but fitting in was, I loved to break rules that made no sense. I graduated and sent my Mom to get my diploma. I refused to attend graduation. Went on to College each a B.A. and my CPA, and CGMA. I also studied graduate level philosophy for three years.

For me college was not school, basically no rules and no one made you do anything. Freedom. I did fine.

B

Last edited by kg4fxg on 23 Feb 2012, 7:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

+1.

I perform at my best when people leave me the frell alone.

I dropped out when i was 15, nobody noticed. Really.

I never really started school until i was 7 anyway, i had a few happy years at primary school with 100% type attendance and then from 11 when i went to high school my attendance slowly dropped. At 11 it was about 70% attendance, by the time i was in my 5th year i was lucky to do 3/5 days. Quite often i'd not turn up to the lessons anyway, i'd dodge them, hide in the toilets, go down to the lake by my school, i'd only ever show my face for lessons i liked(which was maths, science and history since you asked). I was truanting but i was well behaved and didn't get into other trouble, guess i slipped through the system, nobody really noticed when i finally just stopped coming. I never went after christmas of my 5th year.

Thanks.

I love the X-files BTW. I like Moulder's motto. Trust No One.

I think Aspies are smart. We just don't fit the cookie cutter way education (High School) works. Thank God now you can do it on-line. I would have loved to have been home schooled on-line. Forget all the social crap. Most home school kids are done by noon each day. My daughter is home schooled. That extra time in school is a waste unless you need the socialization.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with being different.

B

Added to what i said, i think people did notice actually.

I do remember a teacher asking me if everything was ok at home and my form teacher must have known that half the absence notes were faked. Things weren't ideal at home but they didn't actually bother me, the reason i wasn't interested in most of my lessons and made the minimum of effort in every subject apart from the one's i liked was because i was in my own little bubble and i wasn't interested in anything but reading.

Last edited by The_Sleeper on 19 Feb 2012, 3:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

To many stressful events happing all at the same time that made me have a nervous breakdown.

Thanks.

I would've loved to have attended school via the internet, but it hadn't been invented yet.

As for the rest, I'm not only Aspie, but I'm also a non-sequential learner, which is/was a big part of my problem. U.S. public school is largely geared towards step-by-step learners and "sequencers."

When I was getting my first associate's degree, I pretty much just looked at the syllabus and figured out the minimum amount of homework I'd have to do and classes I've have to attend and still get an A. I've turned avoiding extraneous nonsense into an art.

I started truly despising school around sixth grade, but managed to maintain good performance until the end of 7th. By that point I had embraced the idea that school was ridiculous. I was not learning anything new, not really. There was the occasional bit of new information, sure, but at the rate of instruction I would likely glean more knowledge from watching grass grow all day. I could rant for quite a while about how much I grew to detest public education, and all the ways I rebelled against it and such, but suffice to say I learned far more, and far faster when perusing my own intellectual goals, and just gave up on school. I grew up in CA, and when I learned of the CHSPE I decided that was my best option. It is a GED equivalent in the state, but you become eligible to take it at age 16. So, I dropped out of school and took it just after my 16th birthday, and when I received the passing certificate, I enrolled in college. I still take at least one class every semester, even after 13 years, but the majority of my learning to this day still comes from my own inquiries and research and reading, not from structured learning. It's not really affected my professional life much, as I rarely am asked if I have a HS degree, since I have multiple college degrees.

By the time I finally dropped out, shortly into my senior year, my parents were divorcing, I was homeless (living in the stockroom of an ice cream store) and half blind (retinal inflammation).

A decade later I got my GED, scoring in the 95th percentile overall and perfect scores on 2 of the 5 tests.

I cannot do work that doesn't have a perceived value. As a result when I had learned everything from my classes on my own by reading ahead in the books I would stop doing the classwork/homework. So I ended up getting bad grades even though I often had perfect test scores.

Had they put me in more challenging classes I would have succeeded but their rigid rules did not have the opportunity for me to do that sort of thing and so the school system failed me and I intentionally and bitterly failed it back.

When I dropped out I actively pursued my interest in computers, software and hardware and got a job in a shop building and repairing machines about a month before I turned 18.

School did not teach the way I needed to be taught, and I am not sure that advanced classes would have fixed it...

A lot like polar above me, when I got my GED about 7 years later (plenty long enough later to should have forgotten everything) I passed with perfect scores on 2 out of 4 sections in the pre-test and scored better than 90 percent of High school Seniors on the actual test.

I may go back and try to do college some day, but these days I mostly seek out professional certifications that are relevant to my field of work.