I didn’t dislike high school but was ready to move on, even if it was just to the local state university with no major in mind. A summer of manual labor helped remind me that college was probably a good choice. I had a fun and well-rounded experience, eventually settled on a major, did a semester abroad, met my future wife, and made a ton of friends with whom I still keep in touch.
Hated high school, but was able to reinvent myself in college, so enjoyed it. My youngest son learned a tough lesson about leaving school after high school. He was a good student, probably the one of my four kids who really had the smarts and work ethic to get a degree in, say, computer science. But he was sick of high school and all the bullshit that goes on there, so he chose to go to work instead.
He ended up in retail, and it turned out that he’s really good at managing things, so kept rising to franchise/branch manager or assistant manager. But he topped out in retail as an assistant manager for a big box DIY chain, and the lack of a degree kept him from going elsewhere, as all anyone could see on his resume was that he was in retail. Fast forward 22 years and he’s got a wife (who also is in retail) and three kids and a mortgage, and feels trapped in his life. He truly regrets not having gone to college and doesn’t have the time or money to start now. It’s a damn shame, IMO.
After high school I went to university for a year. I was working 32 hours a week to pay for it, but living at home with my parents. Then I got a cold call from an Army recruiter, and when he mentioned school benefits on my discharge I started listening. So i joined up for three years, and used the benefits after my discharge to finish school. Still had to work as well, but I could afford a place of my own.
I was disillusioned with my high school for essentially holding me back, and so this poisoned me a little bit. I was already an Army reservist, and Saddam had invaded Iraq, so I’d decided to go Regular Army for five years. Of course by time the red tape was done, the short war was over and everyone was heading home. Still, I’m glad I did it.
I was sick of school well before the end of high school. I went to college anyway, pretty much to play drums. Almost failed out after two years and joined the Marine Corps.
I say almost… I was on academic probation my last semestsr, and almost certainly would have failed out of I had stuck around one more.
I somehow managed to finish a degree as an adult, 15 years later.
I was also sick of High School. Enough so that when I was finishing Jr year and I realized I could be done if I took U.S. History over summer school I did. Worked the year but never did not plan on starting college after that. The year working convinced me that while I was accepted as a Business major that was not what I wanted to do.
This is kind of similar to my path. I loved high school, and couldn’t wait for college. Had a good freshman year, then a breakup with my high school girlfriend between freshman and sophomore year kind threw me into a little bit of a loop. I wanted to take a break starting the beginning of my junior year, but my folks talked me out of it. However, after a rough first half of junior year, I finally said “fuck it! I have to take a break to figure things out.”
I still remember how disappointed and nervous they were when I steadfastly announced my decision. They thought I wasn’t going to return to finish college. There never was a doubt in my mind that I would finish the degree–I just needed some time off. I got a work visa to the UK, worked for a few months there, volunteered in Slovenia and then Croatia near the Bosnian border about a year after the end of the conflict there in a grassroots peace project. Took around nine months or so off all together. Traveled around on my own in the in-between times there, as well.
Best decision of my life. Came back and rocked the last year and a half of college with my best GPA years (after being put on academic probation before I left. I still remember the letter from the Dean’s office taking me off academic probation which basically said “well, it looks like whatever you needed to sort out, you’ve sorted out, so you’re back in good standing and we wish you the best in finishing your degree.”)
My only regret is not going with my gut earlier and taking a clean break between sophomore and junior year and not getting placed on academic probation to begin with.
I had mixed attitudes towards school all throughout the 12 precollege years.
On the one hand, I enjoyed learning and was a good student; on the other, it was coercive, with the usual shit that does with that, bossy people, stringent and arbitrary rules, unfair and random punishment, lack of equality with adults; and, furthermore, nasty treatment from peers (bullies etc) and I didn’t like not having the choice to simply bail and leave.
I was hoping college would be the good parts minus the bad parts of that.
I didn’t relish anything remotely akin to Animal House (yecch!) but I thought it would be all countercultural hippies smoking pot, listening to rock, putting up posters and revolutionary statements on our dorm room doors, discussing social politics etc, and HELL YES getting laid and all. I oh so fervently wanted a girlfriend, an artist or musician or militant poet maybe, a free-thinking hippie feminist girlfriend. And yeah, when all that social life stuff didn’t take place I took a long hard look at the educational part of it and decided I didn’t wanna be there.
(Sigh. Way too late to edit, but, Saddam invaded Kuwait.)
High School was bizarre. I worked three part time jobs & attended school part time the last year. I was able to attend part time because I had competed enough classes to graduate at the end of 11th grade. To my dismay the school district added two required-to-graduate classes during the Christmas break of 11th grade. So during my senior, 12th grade, year I had two classes.
Home life was miserable at best. I needed out! I will not go into that. I did a fair amount of “couch surfing” & “camping out” during that final year.
I quit all of my jobs the week of graduation, also the last week of classes. I had enough work done that I only had to take the finals & score 10% on each one. But that 10% was required. So I had to attend the last day of classes. Graduation was the next night.
I hated school so much that I almost left right after the tests. One of my sisters convinced me to stay for graduation. I would regret it if I skipped it, she claimed. In retrospect, I would not have regretted it at all.
In any case, after graduation I fired up my car & left the state. I crossed the state line before midnight that night.
For four years, I drifted, taking jobs as needed & goofing of as often as I wanted. I sold the car & acquired a Triumph motorcycle. I often say that I lived off of that Triumph for those years. I had/have a good mechanical aptitude. Finding work was not hard, especially since I would take whatever was available at that time & place. I have washed a lot of dishes! One time I was able to be a 4H camp counselor for one summer.
I traveled up & down the west coast from San Diego to northern B.C. and as far east as Bozeman Montana.
Heck I could write a book about my “Sojourning Years” there was so much I learned about both myself and about life itself. The people were for the most part pleasant to be with & they were very helpful. Many of them wanted to join my on my journey.
After these years, I attended a community college & got a degree in Aviation Technology, as well as an Aircraft & Powerplant Mechanics license from the FFA. The A&P license has stood me in good staid. I returned to college in my late 40s & now have a degree in Mathematics. I am slowly, as life permits, taking classes to become a Mechanical Engineer.
My advice to Seniors in HS, is go to college if you know it is what you want. If you are not sure, take at least a year off. Travel as much as you can, meet new folks & learn about their culture. Only go to college if you find that you want to.
High School exhausted me, so afterwards I retired. My parents asked me what I’d like as a graduation gift - I said a set of luggage and a one-way plane ticket. That is exactly what I received. I left the Midwest the day after graduating. Spent a solid year waking up every day to sunbathe at the ocean for about 6 hours a day (sounds horrid but my skin is actually better than fine at 50+). I played in the water a lot, too. Read the classics. I worked an easy cocktail waitressing job at an outdoor beach bar that was part of a beautiful resort in the evenings. I was a complete slacker. Didn’t know a soul when I got there and avoided any serious attachments. I learned to be lonely and okay with that. That is an education right there.
I eventually got off my arse and completed grad school. I never considered my early but brief retirement wasted time.
I was so sure I was going to be a teacher that after high school, I was really looking forward to college. It took about 2 months for me to decide that I hated it, tho I did make it thru 2 semesters before dropping out and enlisting in the Navy. Eventually, I went back to college and earned a degree in Aero Engineering.
I thought about pursuing a Masters, but apart from some short-term professional training thru the years, I never took any more academic classes. In the grand scheme of my life, dropping out to join the Navy was one of the best decisions I ever made.
I was always a competent but unenthusiastic student, and given I didn’t hate school, I too headed straight to a four year university. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree four years later, less than six weeks after turning 22. Apparently this is fairly unusual for someone with ADHD: the stats say only 7% of us finish any degree (including an associates) and the average age is 26.
I was pretty immature and probably would have done better post-college had I been older upon graduation: it took years before I got a good paying job.
I had absolutely no desire to attend college straight out of high school, and my parents didn’t hassle me about it. This really shocked a lot of my classmates, and my teachers too, but I had no idea where I wanted to go or what I wanted to study.
I worked at Target, where you see everyone, and at Christmas, quite a few of these same people told me that they understood my decision, and weren’t going back right away themselves.
I didn’t really like High school because it was full of people who didn’t want to be there but had to because of the law.
College was much better with people - even the assholes - who had a purpose and a limit to some of their stupidity as if they fucked up they knew the college would throw them into the bushes.
At least that was what college was like for me back in the mid to late 1980s in Virginia.
Like elfkin47, I went to H.S. every day and graduated. Didn’t mind, it was just something that had to be done. College was lined up, and I wanted to go. Four years of college later, a few days before my parents came up for my graduation ceremony, I walked around town one Sunday. I got to the train station just as the northbound passenger train departed. I distinctly remember saying to myself “I will NEVER go to school again.”
I’m 64 now, but I still say that once in a while.
I could not WAIT to get of high school and into college. I was a smart teen, had friends, yaddayadda but wanted to get away from everyone and everything and be myself. I worked the summer between graduation and college and started college in August, never looking back. AFter graduation, I worked for a year, then went to grad school. Been out of grad school for the last 30 years…
I probably should have done a gap year and was close to doing so. There wasn’t the greatest communication between my parents and myself about college choice, but I finally realized very late in the game that I had to go to a state school unless I wanted to commit to a STEM major and I’d be able to go out of state which was my plan.
Anyway, I had one state school acceptance which was my ultimate safety school. I was Hamlet until the end but decided to just go and see how it went.
So, it wasn’t that I wasn’t enthusiastic to continue on, I simply had no idea what to do. My dad was very unenthusiastic about me doing a non-STEM major. Its still a topic of conversation between my mom and I to this day.
Enjoyed high school, and went right to undergraduate. The first year was a bit rough - not a lot of friends, got sick a lot - but after that it was great.
Still, at the end of college, I had had enough of school, and spent several years volunteering, doing random non-career jobs, traveling, learning languages, until I decided to go to grad school.
I got sick of grad school pretty quickly, but almost everyone does. Stuck it out anyway.
I didn’t even apply to a college. In the four years following high school before I started on my bachelor’s at a real college I: got a job, took some junior college courses, moved out, and got married.