is it possible to drop out of High School and....

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I heard that the ged was getting harder. I thought it was easy back when I did it in the mid 90s.

Back then there weren't really other options for school. No one ever suggested homeschooling to my mother and I know that if I had heard of it I would have demanded it. It would have stopped all those family court visits and getting sent away for truancy. There either wasn't internet back then or not many people were on it when I was in school.

I tried community college once and didn't even last 1 semester. I can't stand school and considering that my last year in a normal school was in sixth grade I probably got way behind and never learned many things that you would need to know to be successful in school.

Yeah, the GED's harder and more expensive, and I believe you have to take it at approved testing stations now, too, or will when the new one's up/running. I helped develop the scoring for it and -- yeah, it's not meant for beauty school dropouts anymore. I'm not convinced making it harder was a great idea, but is what is. My understanding was that the idea was to have it signal "ready for college". And yeah, leaving school after 6th and not having anything like a normal curriculum after that...I think it'd be very tough indeed to pass the new GED.

Things in ed have gotten more lockstep altogether -- certain skills are expected nationally at certain grade levels, and all the tests are in line with each other, and the curricula support the test-taking.

If you dropped out before all these online etc. options existed, my guess is that both your mom and grandma were traditional housewives, maybe with pin-money jobs, in a world where not everyone and his dog went to college. It was much easier back then not to have a degree. My mom didn't have a college degree. But she found the world a tough place when she divorced and found herself competing for work with young BA-holders. Eventually she got herself in the door someplace and worked her way up, but it probably took her a decade and a lot of breath-holding to get to the kind of position a kid out of MBA school might walk into after a year's training.

My brother has a GED and no college degree, and supports himself fine as a software developer, but if his contract markets dry up and for some reason he needs to be a salaried employee somewhere, he's in trouble. He won't pass the industry screens for the kinds of jobs he's qualified for, and he doesn't have a background in anything else. Had another friend in a similar situation -- dropped out of Rensselaer, got a tech job, was fired in a round of layoffs because no degree, and never got back in the salaried door again, because no degree. He's scraped out a self-employed living but really it's his teacher wife who supports the family.

My grandmother never worked outside the home except briefly in her teens. She was a housewife and had 8 kids.

My mother worked crummy low paying jobs like fast food and cleaning and can hopefully retire in a couple of years.

I'm just a lazy bum that lives with my mother and doesn't work. I had 2 jobs in my life, a cleaning job that lasted 5 weeks and a paper route that lasted 2 weeks. That's it. Between not having an education, driver's license, or experience there are very few places I could even think of applying to. I only had one job interview in my life and they didn't hire me.

Ah, the truancy visits, I remember those!

I wish I'd had options back then. I used to have nightmares about going back to school (and, when I was away from home, I used to have nightmares about going back home ).

I have to say, I always thought I HATED school. All of it was a struggle for me... socially, structurally, it was just a bad fit.
Community College was the same way for me.

But, when I went back to Uni (couldn't get past the HR Software Filters to get a new job without a BS)... I found I actually liked it. The gen ed classes were tolerable with all adult students, the business geared classes were ridiculous and I struggled through those... but, the rest of the classes, on self-management and programming and statistics... I LOVED those. Maybe it's the different vibe in night classes, or maybe because I had more life and work context to apply the concepts to. But, it seemed less about memorizing junk and regurgitating it for a test and more about research and finding answers and solving problems. I didn't have to KNOW stuff already, I could solve it for myself.
That was liberating, and I ended up loving school by my last year (I even started early entry into the MS in Applied Analytics, as it tied in with some of my hobbies... I hope to finish that one day, just can't justify the expense now).

It's hard as a parent, too... while I give my sons a safe and stable homelife, it's painful when my oldest has problems with school and I know I disagree myself with making all kids fit in with the same structure. But, I want him to stay on the traditional path for as long as possible (I suspect he may be on the spectrum, unlike my younger son who seems to get along just fine in the classroom). At least he doesn't seem to be bullied the way I was.

Those people don't necessarily prove your point. They could be in jobs for which they are overqualified due to reasons other than employer preference for university degrees for all we know.

Well - -yes. But the point is that there are so many people sloshing around now with degrees, including advanced degrees, that an employer can have his or her pick. And someone with a degree is more likely to have practice with various forms of writing, and might also have some education that comes in handy, whatever the job. My MFA was actually helpful in getting some of those jobs, and a music BFA is a plus when you're working with kids. Even though this was low-wage work. In large companies with HR depts they'll sometimes specify that they prefer a bachelor's, even when it's not strictly necessary, and then just use that as a screen, knowing they'll be deluged with applications.

In one of those counter jobs, I was there with an Ivy PhD, an MA, and a girl who'd done most of an Ivy MFA, then dropped out because she couldn't afford it and already had $60K in school debt. We made about $8/hr.

most writers either had a job as news reporter such as Hemmingway Whitman or made their money writing short stories for magazines, Fitzgerald lived with his parents after dropping out of Princeton and wrote the Great Gatsby.

In other words you need to have a job to live but you can be a writer as well, maybe work for a publishing house, if you can get it. The only way you could devote all your time to writing is if you are in a ultra rich bourgeoisie family who don't care if you get a job. School really helps but is not a absolute necessity, the only problem is that people are less likely to take your work seriously if you don't have credentials. At the Iowa writing program, so I have heard as hersay, they don't really teach anything they either say your writing sucks try again or its good and keep going.

The best education for a writer is reading, READ READ, READ books, I would suggest reading books on critical theory, there are books which analyze and explain poetry and literature, or if you have nothing to do go to college and get a B.A in Literature studies, that is if you have spare money to spend. BUT READING is more important than anything, read the best authors you can find. Dropping out of HIGH SCHOOL is the most absolute DUMBEST thing you could possible do, you will get stuck with a horrible job that takes so much of you life you won't have time for reading or writing, these days you sort of need a college degree just to get a descent hourly job so you may as well go to college too, if not to learn then just to have something to improve your resume.

Hi Miss Dorkness,

I get the feeling that you lived in England for a while. LOL...I've never heard anybody from the US use the term Uni! Maybe it's my age. I also get the feeling you're either in the St Louis or Kansas City areas.

It sounds like you've had lots of experiences in life, and want to share those experiences with those who need the Wisdom of Experience.

Yep. Don't expect to make your living writing short stories anymore, btw. Magazine era is over.

If you go to college I'd actually suggest studying something other than lit. For one thing, lit scholars don't care whether the stuff's any good; they just want to dismantle it, analyze it according to misinterpretations of various theories, and they'll teach you to read like they do. For another, as long as you're going to school, you may as well learn a trade of some sort, or about something other than stories. Stories you can read on your own. I make a living as a writer only because I know about some things besides stories.

The other standard pieces of advice: Live very cheap and don't have kids, or, if you do, make sure you're attached to someone rich who likes you. If you're a woman, don't have kids if you expect to get any writing done. Otherwise the kids will grow up and, after you die, write memoirs about how you neglected them.

dead giveaway, yeah?
I spent some time there, my husband is British (well, he's Irish, but, grew up just outside of London). When I told my sister I'd met someone and he lived in England, she just goes "huh, that makes so much sense for you." Gotta admit my typical manner of speech, uninflected and precise, doesn't set me apart as much there.
Good read on the geography as well... St. Louis side. Been here since I was 20. It's a beautiful state, but, I'm not too down with the average rural viewpoint...

Lol, that's one way to put it. Life has taught me a lot... sometimes I like to think my experiences can shed light to others, many times I just need to vent, and there's normally folks here who've had similar feelings and will listen and share back to validate. It's very cool.