PRIDE AND STUBBORNJUDICE
It’s a little poetic that I can’t remember the exact date of one of the most important decisions of my life. All I know is it was around the beginning of March 2014.
The decision didn’t feel that important when I made it. It definitely didn’t feel like a “potential life ruining mistake” like a few adults told me at the time, that seemed dramatic to me then (and still a little dramatic now). Looking back on it 12 years later, it does feel extremely important to me! But not for the reasons all of those adults said it would be.
(Note: I may or may not have written about some of this before in a post that now doesn't exist. Too bad we'll never know)
— — — — — — — — — —
Let’s go waaaaay back to the beginning. From 2nd - 6th grade, I was in the ALPS program at my elementary school. Apparently that stands for Advanced Learning Placement for Students. I never once thought about what ALPS stood for and I didn’t even realize it was an acronym until like 8th grade (clearly I belonged, with deep thinking skills like that). According to the website of the school district, ALPS is “for students who demonstrate high academic performance, or capacity for high academic performance, beyond grade/age expectations and thus may benefit from extended learning experiences beyond the general education curriculum.” Long story short, we were supposedly the smart kids. The gifted ones. That’s how it was presented. Clearly these children are the scholars that will lead us into the future! (Of the few elementary classmates I've kept track of, all have gone on to be incredible in their lives and in their achievements, but I attribute that to them being good people more than how smart they were in elementary school).
I was never good in school. I’d guess I was average to below average in my ADVANCED LEARNING PLACEMENT for STUDENTS classes. I have always been a good test taker though. I can BS my way through a test with the best of them. I spent those years getting accepted back into the “gifted” classes with test scores that were higher than they should’ve been, considering I never once studied or tried to learn anything outside of the classroom.
In case you can’t tell, I don’t think very highly of gifted or advanced programs for elementary students. I have no science or data to back that up, and maybe there are studies that show in most other cases it is helpful. But as someone who was in it, that’s not how I feel. Looking back on it, I don’t think I was much smarter than the average kid in the normal classes. The problem is when I’m 12 years old finishing 6th grade and all I really understand is I was a part of the “smart kids” my whole childhood, I thought that the habits I formed were the right ones. (I am going to continue to refer to myself as a former gifted kid as you read, please know I am making fun of myself and am not serious in the slightest).
As a result, when middle and high school hit and things started to actually matter, I never changed my habits. If we broke down a week of my free time, for every one hour of study time there was probably 25-30 hours of playing basketball down the street. Not very healthy for my academics (but you should’ve SEEN Dylan and I run a pick and roll in our 15 year old primes. The stories are still passed down generation to generation).
This is going to shock you, especially since I was used to my ADVANCED LEARNING PLACEMENT classes boosting my reputation, but I was not a special student in 7th - 10th grade. I was remarkably average. I was at the level where your parents lecture you about your grades, but they’re not THAT worried. I was a 2005 gray 4-door sedan. I was the default ringtone on your iphone. I was pepperoni on the list of pizza toppings. I was fine! I’m definitely not making honor roll, but I’m not spending lunch in classrooms doing extra work. I think a community college would’ve been happy to accept me, but I would’ve had to bribe someone if I wanted to go to a better school. Shout out Aunt Becky from Full House.
— — — — — — — — — —
In the summer of 2012, my family moved from Utah (where we’d lived since I was 5) to Idaho. I was 16 turning 17, and trying to navigate my raging teenage emotions with the addition of a new state, a new school, divorced parents, new stepmom and new siblings, all while feeling betrayed and pissed off. I had my junior year of high school in a brand new place surrounded by people I had never met. Worst of all, they didn’t even know I was a former gifted student. I was determined to hate it… and hate it I did!
Once I had valiantly fought off the demons during my side-quest in Idaho, I was able to move back to Utah in 2013 for my senior year, living with one of my aunts. All of my siblings and parents were staying in Idaho. Apparently they were more open minded about the place than I was, and as a result they enjoyed it more (Who knew?). The problem I quickly discovered: there’s very little that stays the same when you leave it for an entire year. I was going “back” to something that hadn’t stopped moving forward when I left.
The safety and comfort of the familiar that I returned to wasn’t as strong as I expected. It was more of an adjustment than I had hoped, but still leaps and bounds ahead of where I had been my junior year. Everything rocked along for a while. Through Fall and Winter of my senior year, I found a rhythm, turned 18 and things started happening… I had an INCREDIBLE job that I was very lucky to have, I had a steady girlfriend and integrated into a great group of friends that I had known a bit before I moved. Life seemed good, this is what it should be for a former gifted child.
But I had a little problem that was starting to be a rather large problem. I happen to be a little prideful and a lot stubborn. One result of those two things mixing is a painfully strong hatred of being told what to do. If you tell me what to do, I will desperately try to do anything but the thing you told me to do. Probably comes from having a bossy older sister who was wrong all the time. DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO.. According to that same bossy older sister and my mom, I’ve always been like this. I don’t remember doing anything about it until I was in high school. Apparently I had to live with it as a kid, maybe since there isn’t much you can do against your parents or your school.
But now, I was a legal adult and living “on my own” (I had no idea how much my friends and family were helping behind the scenes, I definitely wasn’t doing it alone. MY HUBRIS). It kept nagging me, and during January and February it started affecting more and more of my decisions.. I WANTED AUTONOMY. Why did this school get to decide where and when I was supposed to be? Why did I have to sit in classes, wasting my time learning things I would never need to use? Don’t they know I’m just here to scrape by and move on? They don’t know what’s better for me than I do!
I started skipping more and more school. By February, it was a miracle if I went to half of my classes in a day. One time I walked into a class, sat down when the bell rang.. Then after a few minutes I just got up and walked out. I just left. I don’t remember if the teacher noticed or was even in the room and I didn’t really care. My poor parents did what they could from 350 miles away, but my blossoming free will didn’t give them a chance.
Finally, we arrive around the beginning of March 2014. I finally had enough. I was officially ready to go. I had better things to do, and thus, I made the decision. One of the top 3 most important decisions of my life: I was done with school. I’m over it, and I’m dropping out.
It didn’t feel like that big of a deal at the time. I knew I was over school and I felt like anything would be better than wasting my time pretending I wasn’t. As I started telling people about what I was going to do, I came face to face with the potential consequence(s) of such an action. If I went through with this:
After 11 years and 9 months of schooling, after all the fame and fortune I got from the ALPS program, all I needed to do was power through 3 more months. All of the worry and concern people had for me could go away, with just 3 months of patience. I could keep my job and my living arrangements. Put your dumb power-trippy ego to the side and be patient.
In the end, I was more stubborn than scared and so… I was gone. (You could almost say that in the end, it didn't even matter...)
— — — — — — — — — —
While my friends were graduating and celebrating the end of their secondary education, I was flailing around trying to figure out what I was going to do job-wise and home-wise. I was faced with the exact consequences that I was warned about! How did I not see that coming?
The parents of my girlfriend at the time were unbelievably kind enough to let me live with them for a while, which might be the only reason my life didn’t immediately fall apart. I bounced from job to job, trying to find something that was easy and fulfilling enough to be worthy of a formerly gifted 18 year old high school dropout. I had a warrant out for my arrest at one point for an unresolved traffic violation, I side-stepped a few other felonies (nothing serious, I’m still more afraid of the streets than they are of me) and ended up in a pretty bad place mentally. I was struggling.
What do you do when everything is crumbling around you? TURN TO FAMILY. I went back to Idaho in January 2015 to get back on my feet. Moved in with my mom and siblings, got any job I could find, and paid rent like a responsible adult - and so life went on for a while. I calmed down, grew up in a situation with smaller stakes and a support system around me that took the pressure off. But something was bothering me, though I couldn’t figure out what it was. It was just there. Like a tiny rock in my shoe. Like an itch I couldn’t scratch. Or a frog sitting in your window well croaking his life away while you’re trying to write a blog post (I asked him what he needed and he just kept croaking away. Had to throw the headphones on).
I couldn’t figure out what to do so I left that feeling alone. I’m really good at stuffing all my emotions down deep until I explode, but that’s a topic for another day. By August of 2015 I decided I was ready to give Utah another try again, so there I went. Got a call center job making plenty of money and I got to work in the same place as multiple family members and my best friend, I couldn’t really ask for better! (No really, I couldn’t. Pretty sure it was a requirement to have at least a high school diploma to work there and... I didn’t have such a thing! Don’t tell anyone)
Being back in Utah brought that nagging feeling back and I realized what it was. It bothered me that I, in my own head, was just a high school dropout. It wasn’t anyone or any one moment in particular, it was just a bunch of little things. Things like when you’re filling out a survey or questionnaire and you get the “highest level of education” question. Not being able to AT LEAST check “high school diploma or similar” or whatever, was infuriating (ALSO, why don’t they have a choice for former gifted students? Where is my respect??)
Now, I’m still prideful and I’m still stubborn. If someone would’ve been like “hey why don’t you go back and get your GED or whatever” I would’ve said not very nice things to them and then not done what they said. But since I was doing this for myself, the pride and stubbornness finally turned into an advantage.
As noted poet Lil Wayne once said, “real G’s move in silence like lasagna”. Assuming the G he’s referring to stood for “gifted students”, I went about my business quietly and got my diploma through night classes. It was important to me that I took the steps to get an actual diploma and not a GED. NOW LISTEN, I have nothing against a GED and some of the smartest people I’ve worked with in the past have their GED. They count the same as a diploma. I just knew I wouldn’t be able to let myself off the hook unless I did exactly what I didn’t do before because.. You know.. Stubborn.
When I had realized what the nagging feeling was, I shared some of my thoughts with my dad. He helped me sort through the “why” and what it would mean if I chose to go back and do it, or not. Once I was wrapped up, diploma in hand, he was the only person I told. No announcement, no celebrating, I didn’t want any of that because I hadn’t done it for those reasons. I had done it because I needed to know myself that I was able to do it. (sidebar - I lived with Shelby at the time and didn’t tell her. She only found out when she saw the diploma in my room. She still hasn’t forgiven me)
This isn’t a story about how necessary education is, because I don’t think that’s true. I think you can be hugely successful no matter how much education you have. They aren’t mutually exclusive obviously, but I would always choose being a good person over being well educated. Be kind and then figure the rest out. If you can do that and get your education in on time too, you’ve clearly got me beat.
Here is my best attempt at some sort of lesson to this story:
I said in the first paragraph that dropping out was one of the most important decisions of my life (and it is), but not for the reasons anyone warned me about. It mattered because it was my choice, and I got to prove all those worriers right or wrong. From being a faux gifted kid, to shockingly average student, to defiant dropout, and finally to quietly satisfied adult, on my own terms. That diploma means more to me now than it ever would have if I’d stuck around for those extra three months in 2014.
Being stubborn caused a bunch of trouble along the way, and it taught me that I have to live with what my choices bring into my life as a result. I thought my big, bold, brave choice was stubbornly leaving school early, but the more meaningful choice was stubbornly going back and getting that damn diploma.
And remember… Life is easy when you’re a gifted kid.
Just kidding.
P.S. IF YOU’RE STILL A STUDENT AND YOU ARE READING THIS. I’m not going to be a hypocrite and say “Stay in school kids!”..... But stay in school kids. I don’t regret any of the choices I made, and I ended up in a great place at the end of it all.. but dropping out will make your life HARD if you choose the same things I did. Just get to graduation. You’ll be glad you did… You have your entire life to fail spectacularly like I did.
The decision didn’t feel that important when I made it. It definitely didn’t feel like a “potential life ruining mistake” like a few adults told me at the time, that seemed dramatic to me then (and still a little dramatic now). Looking back on it 12 years later, it does feel extremely important to me! But not for the reasons all of those adults said it would be.
(Note: I may or may not have written about some of this before in a post that now doesn't exist. Too bad we'll never know)
— — — — — — — — — —
Let’s go waaaaay back to the beginning. From 2nd - 6th grade, I was in the ALPS program at my elementary school. Apparently that stands for Advanced Learning Placement for Students. I never once thought about what ALPS stood for and I didn’t even realize it was an acronym until like 8th grade (clearly I belonged, with deep thinking skills like that). According to the website of the school district, ALPS is “for students who demonstrate high academic performance, or capacity for high academic performance, beyond grade/age expectations and thus may benefit from extended learning experiences beyond the general education curriculum.” Long story short, we were supposedly the smart kids. The gifted ones. That’s how it was presented. Clearly these children are the scholars that will lead us into the future! (Of the few elementary classmates I've kept track of, all have gone on to be incredible in their lives and in their achievements, but I attribute that to them being good people more than how smart they were in elementary school).
I was never good in school. I’d guess I was average to below average in my ADVANCED LEARNING PLACEMENT for STUDENTS classes. I have always been a good test taker though. I can BS my way through a test with the best of them. I spent those years getting accepted back into the “gifted” classes with test scores that were higher than they should’ve been, considering I never once studied or tried to learn anything outside of the classroom.
In case you can’t tell, I don’t think very highly of gifted or advanced programs for elementary students. I have no science or data to back that up, and maybe there are studies that show in most other cases it is helpful. But as someone who was in it, that’s not how I feel. Looking back on it, I don’t think I was much smarter than the average kid in the normal classes. The problem is when I’m 12 years old finishing 6th grade and all I really understand is I was a part of the “smart kids” my whole childhood, I thought that the habits I formed were the right ones. (I am going to continue to refer to myself as a former gifted kid as you read, please know I am making fun of myself and am not serious in the slightest).
As a result, when middle and high school hit and things started to actually matter, I never changed my habits. If we broke down a week of my free time, for every one hour of study time there was probably 25-30 hours of playing basketball down the street. Not very healthy for my academics (but you should’ve SEEN Dylan and I run a pick and roll in our 15 year old primes. The stories are still passed down generation to generation).
This is going to shock you, especially since I was used to my ADVANCED LEARNING PLACEMENT classes boosting my reputation, but I was not a special student in 7th - 10th grade. I was remarkably average. I was at the level where your parents lecture you about your grades, but they’re not THAT worried. I was a 2005 gray 4-door sedan. I was the default ringtone on your iphone. I was pepperoni on the list of pizza toppings. I was fine! I’m definitely not making honor roll, but I’m not spending lunch in classrooms doing extra work. I think a community college would’ve been happy to accept me, but I would’ve had to bribe someone if I wanted to go to a better school. Shout out Aunt Becky from Full House.
— — — — — — — — — —
In the summer of 2012, my family moved from Utah (where we’d lived since I was 5) to Idaho. I was 16 turning 17, and trying to navigate my raging teenage emotions with the addition of a new state, a new school, divorced parents, new stepmom and new siblings, all while feeling betrayed and pissed off. I had my junior year of high school in a brand new place surrounded by people I had never met. Worst of all, they didn’t even know I was a former gifted student. I was determined to hate it… and hate it I did!
Once I had valiantly fought off the demons during my side-quest in Idaho, I was able to move back to Utah in 2013 for my senior year, living with one of my aunts. All of my siblings and parents were staying in Idaho. Apparently they were more open minded about the place than I was, and as a result they enjoyed it more (Who knew?). The problem I quickly discovered: there’s very little that stays the same when you leave it for an entire year. I was going “back” to something that hadn’t stopped moving forward when I left.
The safety and comfort of the familiar that I returned to wasn’t as strong as I expected. It was more of an adjustment than I had hoped, but still leaps and bounds ahead of where I had been my junior year. Everything rocked along for a while. Through Fall and Winter of my senior year, I found a rhythm, turned 18 and things started happening… I had an INCREDIBLE job that I was very lucky to have, I had a steady girlfriend and integrated into a great group of friends that I had known a bit before I moved. Life seemed good, this is what it should be for a former gifted child.
But I had a little problem that was starting to be a rather large problem. I happen to be a little prideful and a lot stubborn. One result of those two things mixing is a painfully strong hatred of being told what to do. If you tell me what to do, I will desperately try to do anything but the thing you told me to do. Probably comes from having a bossy older sister who was wrong all the time. DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO.. According to that same bossy older sister and my mom, I’ve always been like this. I don’t remember doing anything about it until I was in high school. Apparently I had to live with it as a kid, maybe since there isn’t much you can do against your parents or your school.
But now, I was a legal adult and living “on my own” (I had no idea how much my friends and family were helping behind the scenes, I definitely wasn’t doing it alone. MY HUBRIS). It kept nagging me, and during January and February it started affecting more and more of my decisions.. I WANTED AUTONOMY. Why did this school get to decide where and when I was supposed to be? Why did I have to sit in classes, wasting my time learning things I would never need to use? Don’t they know I’m just here to scrape by and move on? They don’t know what’s better for me than I do!
I started skipping more and more school. By February, it was a miracle if I went to half of my classes in a day. One time I walked into a class, sat down when the bell rang.. Then after a few minutes I just got up and walked out. I just left. I don’t remember if the teacher noticed or was even in the room and I didn’t really care. My poor parents did what they could from 350 miles away, but my blossoming free will didn’t give them a chance.
Finally, we arrive around the beginning of March 2014. I finally had enough. I was officially ready to go. I had better things to do, and thus, I made the decision. One of the top 3 most important decisions of my life: I was done with school. I’m over it, and I’m dropping out.
It didn’t feel like that big of a deal at the time. I knew I was over school and I felt like anything would be better than wasting my time pretending I wasn’t. As I started telling people about what I was going to do, I came face to face with the potential consequence(s) of such an action. If I went through with this:
- My once in a lifetime job was gone. I couldn’t work there if I wasn’t in high school or college. My boss there really went out of his way to help me and did his best to convince me to stay in school, I was just already past the point of no return.
- I would either need to pay market rent (you know… as an adult does in the world we live in) or I would have to find a new place to live.
- Very much the bottom of the list (but a list looks better with 3 bullet points instead of 2), what were people going to think? I was about to be the guy who just disappeared one day and no one saw him again, and didn’t explain himself to friends, or those weird friends of friends that you kind of like but aren’t sure about. What will they think of me? Will they remember me as a former gifted student, or a high school dropout?!
After 11 years and 9 months of schooling, after all the fame and fortune I got from the ALPS program, all I needed to do was power through 3 more months. All of the worry and concern people had for me could go away, with just 3 months of patience. I could keep my job and my living arrangements. Put your dumb power-trippy ego to the side and be patient.
In the end, I was more stubborn than scared and so… I was gone. (You could almost say that in the end, it didn't even matter...)
— — — — — — — — — —
While my friends were graduating and celebrating the end of their secondary education, I was flailing around trying to figure out what I was going to do job-wise and home-wise. I was faced with the exact consequences that I was warned about! How did I not see that coming?
The parents of my girlfriend at the time were unbelievably kind enough to let me live with them for a while, which might be the only reason my life didn’t immediately fall apart. I bounced from job to job, trying to find something that was easy and fulfilling enough to be worthy of a formerly gifted 18 year old high school dropout. I had a warrant out for my arrest at one point for an unresolved traffic violation, I side-stepped a few other felonies (nothing serious, I’m still more afraid of the streets than they are of me) and ended up in a pretty bad place mentally. I was struggling.
What do you do when everything is crumbling around you? TURN TO FAMILY. I went back to Idaho in January 2015 to get back on my feet. Moved in with my mom and siblings, got any job I could find, and paid rent like a responsible adult - and so life went on for a while. I calmed down, grew up in a situation with smaller stakes and a support system around me that took the pressure off. But something was bothering me, though I couldn’t figure out what it was. It was just there. Like a tiny rock in my shoe. Like an itch I couldn’t scratch. Or a frog sitting in your window well croaking his life away while you’re trying to write a blog post (I asked him what he needed and he just kept croaking away. Had to throw the headphones on).
I couldn’t figure out what to do so I left that feeling alone. I’m really good at stuffing all my emotions down deep until I explode, but that’s a topic for another day. By August of 2015 I decided I was ready to give Utah another try again, so there I went. Got a call center job making plenty of money and I got to work in the same place as multiple family members and my best friend, I couldn’t really ask for better! (No really, I couldn’t. Pretty sure it was a requirement to have at least a high school diploma to work there and... I didn’t have such a thing! Don’t tell anyone)
Being back in Utah brought that nagging feeling back and I realized what it was. It bothered me that I, in my own head, was just a high school dropout. It wasn’t anyone or any one moment in particular, it was just a bunch of little things. Things like when you’re filling out a survey or questionnaire and you get the “highest level of education” question. Not being able to AT LEAST check “high school diploma or similar” or whatever, was infuriating (ALSO, why don’t they have a choice for former gifted students? Where is my respect??)
Now, I’m still prideful and I’m still stubborn. If someone would’ve been like “hey why don’t you go back and get your GED or whatever” I would’ve said not very nice things to them and then not done what they said. But since I was doing this for myself, the pride and stubbornness finally turned into an advantage.
As noted poet Lil Wayne once said, “real G’s move in silence like lasagna”. Assuming the G he’s referring to stood for “gifted students”, I went about my business quietly and got my diploma through night classes. It was important to me that I took the steps to get an actual diploma and not a GED. NOW LISTEN, I have nothing against a GED and some of the smartest people I’ve worked with in the past have their GED. They count the same as a diploma. I just knew I wouldn’t be able to let myself off the hook unless I did exactly what I didn’t do before because.. You know.. Stubborn.
When I had realized what the nagging feeling was, I shared some of my thoughts with my dad. He helped me sort through the “why” and what it would mean if I chose to go back and do it, or not. Once I was wrapped up, diploma in hand, he was the only person I told. No announcement, no celebrating, I didn’t want any of that because I hadn’t done it for those reasons. I had done it because I needed to know myself that I was able to do it. (sidebar - I lived with Shelby at the time and didn’t tell her. She only found out when she saw the diploma in my room. She still hasn’t forgiven me)
This isn’t a story about how necessary education is, because I don’t think that’s true. I think you can be hugely successful no matter how much education you have. They aren’t mutually exclusive obviously, but I would always choose being a good person over being well educated. Be kind and then figure the rest out. If you can do that and get your education in on time too, you’ve clearly got me beat.
Here is my best attempt at some sort of lesson to this story:
I said in the first paragraph that dropping out was one of the most important decisions of my life (and it is), but not for the reasons anyone warned me about. It mattered because it was my choice, and I got to prove all those worriers right or wrong. From being a faux gifted kid, to shockingly average student, to defiant dropout, and finally to quietly satisfied adult, on my own terms. That diploma means more to me now than it ever would have if I’d stuck around for those extra three months in 2014.
Being stubborn caused a bunch of trouble along the way, and it taught me that I have to live with what my choices bring into my life as a result. I thought my big, bold, brave choice was stubbornly leaving school early, but the more meaningful choice was stubbornly going back and getting that damn diploma.
And remember… Life is easy when you’re a gifted kid.
Just kidding.
P.S. IF YOU’RE STILL A STUDENT AND YOU ARE READING THIS. I’m not going to be a hypocrite and say “Stay in school kids!”..... But stay in school kids. I don’t regret any of the choices I made, and I ended up in a great place at the end of it all.. but dropping out will make your life HARD if you choose the same things I did. Just get to graduation. You’ll be glad you did… You have your entire life to fail spectacularly like I did.
I love this! More importantly, I love you!🫶🏼
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on finishing on your terms, it makes the intended outcome definitely sweeter!🤗
So proud of you!