One of the best days of my life was the day I dropped out of high school. When I quit I was almost 19, taking 10th grade classes. I was fed up with a system that let me down, yet embarrassed that I was actually doing the unthinkable. I was certain no one in the school system cared if I quit. I was going nowhere, and I wanted to get out.
It all started in upstate New York at a huge high school. No one seemed to care that many of the students were smoking every morning in the parking lot, then running off to skip school in the woods. I ran with a rough crowd, and my progress was bleak. During my in-school suspension, I spent the day busy writing Led Zeppelin lyrics on my notebooks.
The hippie school
It was decided I would attend a small private school, an alternative place for intelligent long hairs who could not assimilate into the establishment. I loved it there! Bean bag chairs adorned classrooms. We brought food from home and shared it. Everyone talked about going to college. My English teacher was a real-life hippie who preached to us the joy of life and literature. He taught us Shakespeare by having us act out love scenes. He smelled foul, and inspired us to no end.
The art teacher wore a cape, took us outside the classroom walls and instructed us to paint our feelings into negative spaces. I gained an appreciation for art and literature and learned to love learning. But things went sour at the hippie school, and it abruptly closed. I ended up, along with my little sister, on a plane bound for England to live with our father and his new wife. Amid all the excitement, there was barely time to wonder what school would be like there.
From that point, school was never the same. The boarding school was Hogwarts without the magic. I got kicked out. Next was a day school with uniforms, mohawks, piercings, tattoos galore, cigarettes, and for the first time since we left home, boys.
My parents feared I might not graduate if I stayed in England. I was sent to live with family in Ohio. I slid easily back into American ways, but I stood out with my proper British accent. I was finally home, and yet a total stranger. The school did not count my year in England, so I was to be in 10th grade, instead of 11th. I cried all day in the counselors office.
Less than a year later, my family reunited in Raleigh, where I was to attend Millbrook High School. But my transcripts were muddled, and I had no immunization records. We had to track down my childhood doctor. When I finally started my junior year, there was a record-breaking snow fall that kept schools closed for weeks. It was already spring when I finally got to attend.
By my senior year, I was already 18. When a school administrator took the time to count my credits, I was told it would take two additional years to graduate, maybe less with summer school. Then they walked me down the hall and placed me in a ninth-grade science class. I wondered how this had happened to me. I had attended private schools and was educated abroad. I had ordered meals in French and memorized Chaucer. Now they wanted me to attend class with kids. For two years. High school had become one big pothole on the highway of life. I dropped out, got my GED and went on with my life.
But what I was exposed to at that hippie school has stayed with me. I figured out that learning can happen even if you have your feet up and are staring out the window. I've attended college, and had a long career in computer support.
Getting my GED has not hampered me in the least. I do have a little regret about not going to a prom or getting a yearbook, but I am really glad I was able to make the right decision for me.
