I was in the “gifted” program since the first grade. Always hated reading and doing homework. Rarely did either. Always aced the tests. That makes me a geek, by the way, and not a nerd. Nerds study. I never have.

Anyway, so in middle school my grades started slipping because they counted homework as a major part of the grade. I still aced the tests, but I was doing poorly because I didn’t want to do stupid worksheets every day. For gifted kids, they basically taught the same crap they taught the other kids, but they gave us more homework. I always thought that was sort of a backwards mentality. Anyway, I squeaked through the end of middle school (8th grade) with mostly Ds.

I always hated reading, but that was just because I read really slowly. I can’t comprehend what I read unless I say it aloud in my head. So naturally, it takes time. I think it’s because I’m an auditory learner or something like that. First semester of high school I did pretty well. I had some teachers I really liked, so I actually read most of the books, and it was okay.

Had an evil drama teacher from hell, but besides that, it was okay.

Let me take a moment to explain my high school. I was in PACE (the Program of Additional Curricular Experiences), and the rest of the school was divided into seven “academies”: Beach, Pac Rim, CIC, Spirit, Fine Arts, and two others that I don’t remember….

Enough explanation. You’ll need it later, though. Sophomore year was another story altogether. I didn’t like any of my teachers, the drama teacher was causing a lot of trouble in my life, and as homework counted more and more, my grades slipped more and more, and I eventually stopped caring because I decided it wasn’t worth it.

Side note: I don’t regret any of the decisions I made.

First semester of that year I got Fs in both AP US History and English (I never read any of the books, and I never did any of the homework, and the teacher didn’t like giving tests, so I was screwed).

So I got kicked out of PACE.

No big whoop, right? I’ll just leave the program.

Wrong.

You can’t leave an academy without entering another, and you can’t enter an academy except at the beginning of the year. They can make exceptions, but it would be a cold day in hell before the other academies would make exceptions for a former PACE student.

So I was forced to transfer to another school.

It took two weeks before I dropped out.

I was more intelligent than the teachers at the second school, and that’s not saying much for the teachers.

At the second school, I realized all I was doing was wasting time. I wasn’t learning anything because no one would teach the way I wanted to learn. And I couldn’t make many friends (though I did have a few who went to that school) because the people there were really cruel to geeks like me. (Case in point: I went on Valentine’s Day in a pink suit. No one thought it was cool or funny or anything. They just called me “fag” all day. It was so lame.)

My first day at the second school, by the way, was my birthday.

Talk about a crappy birthday.

Anyway, so I decided that I wanted to do things my own way, and I dropped out. That spring I took the California High School Proficiency Exam (the legal equivalent of a diploma… like a GED), which I could have passed with ease in the seventh grade.

I went on to take a few classes at the local community college, but academia is really not my thing (no offense to you Acadians out there).

I had to learn to do something profitable, and I was good with computers, so I taught myself to make web sites.

Fortunately for me the world is changing again. In the world of computers, you don’t need a college degree to get a good job. You just need the skills to accomplish what needs to be accomplished. I taught myself those skills, and I’m damn proud of it. Now I make more money than any of my peers will be making when they graduate in two or three years, and in two or three years, I’ll be making twice as much.

There’s a Forbes magazine article that I still need to frame and hang on my wall. The cover says, “College? Who needs it!” It’s about young web developers making a killing off the Internet age without college degrees.

So that’s me. High school dropout. High-tech developer.