I dropped out of HS to pursue electronic music

[Frantz]

I dropped out of HS so I would have enough time to follow this thread.

[Jace-BeOS]

Sadly, if anything, school teaches kids how NOT to think. Yeah, the polar opposite of what they should be doing.

Let's face it, we're seeing so much corruption in the news. In government, in the police forces, in finance and private sectors. They have it made. Now what incentive do these powerful people have to help nurture rational, independent thinking and spirited individuals who in large number are likely to overthrow the system? None

The usual sheep right about now will be bleating about "omg comspiraty theery", just as they're told to.

Take for example maths - famous for being hated by the masses. It's actually one of the most beautiful subjects around, and connects right in with logic, reasoning and even thinking about the fabric of reality and imagination. Instead it's typically been turned into an exercise of rote learning by repetition, focussing on number crunching and arithmetic, rather than the underlying concepts and patterns. Check out Vi Hart's talks on Youtube explaining this in far more detail than I can, she totally nailed it.

i am with you every step of the way. In the USA, the education system is all about producing obedient workers, not people who can think critically.

However much i agree that math is beautiful and can be everywhere, i am one of a minority(?) of people who have what is called dyscalculia (kind of like dyslexia of calculation/numbers)... so i'm pretty happy to let everyone else do math for me.

But the rest... yeah, there's nothing in school that EDUCATES. Not in my country, at least. Still, dumping high school will not tell future employers "wow, this guy thinks for himself!" It will tell them "he couldn't even graduate high school." If it DOES tell them "wow, this guy thinks for himself!", they'll probably bin the job application just as fiercely. They don't want free thinkers either! Been there, done that; wearing the scar tissue.

My parents intentionally oppressed and ignored my musical and artistic interests because they were afraid i'd become like my mother's wandering one-man-band brother, who was poor and couldn't play nice with anyone, ever... and the end result was pretty much that they fulfilled their own prophecy by pushing me into work that i wasn't suited for (as in, the 9-5 corporate world, full of bureaucrats and sociopaths, office politics, social games, etc). i'd have been better off being sent to art school.

So, troll or not, fool to drop out or not, it could be a valid path for him if he knows what he wants and pursues it with an unstoppable passion. Without that passion, he's likely to suffer. But dropping out of HS isn't a death sentence. One of my closest friends ever was a drop out and she's brilliant, wicked funny, speaks and thinks like an intellectual, is socially intelligent and very educated, and runs her own business, which let her drop out of the keyboard monkey 9-5 rat race hellhole. She's no rock star or DJ Shadow/Skrillex/WTF-ever-DJ, but she's making her life on her terms.

If the original poster cleans up his language skills and works at the things he wants to pursue, dropping HS might end up being irrelevant. But that's if he recognizes the need to eternally further educate himself, school or not.

[Hink]

... with that said I have an 18 year old daughter who is a Jr in High school, I am extremely proactive in her education and have her in an amazing high school. Not a public school but not a private school either. She attends a charter school that is fairly new, it runs 6-12th grades. In 2011 they had their first graduating class of students that did the entire six year, 100% of the graduating class was accepted to a 4 year college or university. My daughter has learning disabilities, public schools kept her on meds and kept floating her along. I got her to this school as a freshman and the first thing was to stop the meds, then she repeated her freshman year. She once hated school and now loves it, she now say "when I go to college".

This is awesome to read. i love positive stories like this, especially seeing people get out from under drugging.

just saw this, thanx

a few things make this school work for instance several times a year we (the parents) go in for an ILP presentation from our daughter. (Individual Learning Program) At the beginning of the year she presents her goals for the year and then over the year she presents her progress, her weaknesses and strengths. These presentations are key, not only does a student spend time preparing it but the fact they have to put together an effective presentation is great. The school was a suburban campus of Boston University so all the classrooms are lecture halls which I also think helps a lot for college prep. At the end of the year in front of other students and other parents they do a POL (Presentation of Learning) summing up the whole year. Their senior year they spend a lot of time on SAT prep.

The school does a lot of presentation type things, a lot of projects including many group projects. Parents can track every project, every assignment, every test and every grade online. However I do not do this, I did her two freshman years but she's 18 now (and once again a junior) and I think it's more important that she knows I trust her. She can track everything herself and being self motivated is better imo, she's too old to have to keep nagging her.

Another thing is that a "D" is a failing grade...when you put all these things together not only do the kids get a great education in the needed subjects they also have been well prepared for college and/or life. The presentations teach them how to present themselves and they get over the fear of public speaking. When they go out into the world whether it be for a college interview or a job interview they can present themselves with confidence. The students also grow great bonds and also ties with the school, there is a lot of school pride and a respect for fellow students. No bullies, no kids outside the school smoking and students from many area towns.

Her other choice would have been a mid size industrial city's high school with cops, metal detectors, drugs, gangs and a school department that gave up on her in 3rd grade...only downside is I have to drive her.

[Hink]

Sadly, if anything, school teaches kids how NOT to think. Yeah, the polar opposite of what they should be doing.

Let's face it, we're seeing so much corruption in the news. In government, in the police forces, in finance and private sectors. They have it made. Now what incentive do these powerful people have to help nurture rational, independent thinking and spirited individuals who in large number are likely to overthrow the system? None

The usual sheep right about now will be bleating about "omg comspiraty theery", just as they're told to.

Take for example maths - famous for being hated by the masses. It's actually one of the most beautiful subjects around, and connects right in with logic, reasoning and even thinking about the fabric of reality and imagination. Instead it's typically been turned into an exercise of rote learning by repetition, focussing on number crunching and arithmetic, rather than the underlying concepts and patterns. Check out Vi Hart's talks on Youtube explaining this in far more detail than I can, she totally nailed it.

see my post above...this why I feel so lucky...cookie cutter education does not work imho...they dont say this but I say this about my daughter's school...I grew up hearing teachers say "if I can reach one child this year I will be happy" and that's bunk. This school's attitude is "if we cant reach one student that's not good and we will find out why and how".

[ntom]

7 pages of long walls of text....I'll catch up eventually, but 3 pages in and I want to put my hat in the ring;

I was actually attending a charter school due to some apparent issues I had with the standard learning situation, my mother had moved me from several schools but finally wound up at a charter school which I dropped out of.
Shortly after I obtained my GED and a month later attended college at a technical school. I'll admit this was my first major f**k up, as I was living on my own at the college - at 17, and I felt so liberated from my mother (I only refer to my mother because parents are divorced, just if you were wondering why specifically here instead of "my parents") since there was quite the drama at home when I told her my decision of dropping out - it actually resulted in me living on the streets for a week, that was fun. Anyways, finally free, I slacked off, REALLY hard when I was in college, and it wasn't until the the last quarter of the second semester I finally started pulling myself together, sadly, it was too late and I was booted from the school for failing grades.

The bright side is, that I was attending college for advertising, and while the advertising part I enjoyed, the core of the focus of the semester was photography, which I was a huge hobbiest of. But upon attending class my love for it fell flat and I eventually hated cameras, dSLRs and all.
So at least that gave me a chance to redirect my focus, but school help proved to me, Art is never something I could take to a job or to school, which is why all my music has been self taught studies and this wonderful placed filled with cats, called KVR.

My success was actually through my jobs, as my position at a Sonic Drive-In gave me the customer service experience a failing Time Warner contractor wanted for their techs, so they brought me in. The place was terribly managed and was poorly organized. The turnover rate was aweful. Over 50, well over 50 people came and went during the year and 2 months I worked there - some fired, some quit. If anyone worked there and heard I withstood the shitstorm from that place for a year and 2 months they would think I should earn some sort of medal.
I eventually couldn't take the management anymore and left, attended a bartending school (Hink; make sure to tell future friends: Bar tending school is nothing short of a complete waste of time) which didn't land me anything. Then a commercial contractor that installed data infrastructure called me up needing me. I joined them making clear; I have never done commercial work with my cable and may not be the up to the speed you expect. They affirmed me that the people being hired would be trained for commercial installations and that speed was a nonissue.

The irony was that me and all of their new hires were fired for not being up to speed. (I would think some speed is better than no speed for projects, not sure what they did after getting rid of their staff that way)
Fortunately this helped me land at a company that was aiding the Google Fiber installation in Austin. This was actually a good company, benefits, a ladder to climb, they respected their employees, and it paid really well!
In fact I felt a bit smug when I was around others that I went to school with (mostly because they also frequently bullied me while I went to school) because I was making more than them in an engineering job without a degree. Of course that bit me in the ass....hmmm....quite literally.
Since I hadn't been working for the Google Fiber company long enough to earn medical leave, I later started having my ass problems that lead to the very silly thread I posted some months ago (I was happy and on the best meds in the best meds in the world ) but that road was long and painful before I got the surgery. With ass abscences that hurt like a motherf**ker that seemed to come right back after lancing it, it consistently kept putting which lead to a (mutual agreement) of being let go. Their project was loosing funding because fuckin' google is way to damn slow at staying ontop of their projects they couldn't get the work to my employer fast enough to make sure every employee had work, so with my health issues and the lack of work we parted ways.
Then I went to surgery, was drugged up for a month, and now here I am! Back on the market looking for jobs again.

This long ass story is simply to make the point: I feel like odds frequently were against me, and sometimes it was my own fault, but I have been able to persevere through it all and now I can say with complete honesty: "Trust me, I was an engineer"
Hell I was an engineer! Without a degree. I was one of the youngest employees working in that group and one of the ones with the shortest educational history.
It's not really about highschool, at least not here in Texas; High school doesn't matter. And in fact, an Oil engineer told me their employer likes to see that someone got their GED as it shows they have to motivation to achieve a better life.
Secondly, more and more companies I see say this in their application, "Requires [degree] or [x] years of relevant experience"
Would a degree hurt? No. I would love to go back to college and study....uhm....some sort of engineering field. But, having one is no longer required.

[tapper mike]

I read all that and applaud you on your effort.

I used to be in restaraunt management. It's true that an employer looks once at your education and twice at your work experience. I got my chef's cert the old fashion way... apprenticeship. Which was a bitch but it also showed that i had work experience. You wouldn't believe how incompetent some guys are coming out of cooking school. It's shameful, they really can't cook in a production environment and can't manage. One really has to learn hands on to pull it off and keep it together. Most culinary schools that I'm aware of it's a big shout down contest. Being an arse to front of the house and back of the house is the quickest way to kill a business. Shittling on people makes for great "reality" tv but for a lousy work environment.

I'd prefer to train people myself and allow them to believe in themselves. Positive encouragement and then if they were dedicated to the job that's all which was needed. Down dressing someone in front of others doesn't make the food come out any faster or better. I'd always put together teams that would stick around. People who took pride in what they did.

In the corporate world this approach was the death of me. Because there are always asshats above that made thier bones by stepping on the little people. Even though my numbers were the best of the division I'd still get shit on for not being a hardarse with my staff. Deserved raises, bonuses and promotions flew right past me. So I left corporate restaraunts for a time.

Working for an independent restaraunt was easier at first. Better pay for me and my staff, less hours and as long as the money was flowing life was fine. The problem was in a power shift when the General Manager was replaced by an investors son. Poor little rich kid who didn't want to understand the biz and thought he could use the store as his personal bank. He bled the restaraunt dry and could care less because there was always another way to tap dad for more money.

While the money isn't what it used to be, I've never been happier then working for the company I do now doing technical support. I work from home. So long as my daily responsibilites are completed in a 24 hour period life is good. If I need time off all I have to do is contact my boss and tell him when and how long. I've got plenty of time left over for playing music and visiting kvr. But here's the kicker.

With the exception of music the software industry is dying fast. Few people are interested in software. It's all facebook, instagram and youtube. I very well could see my company go the way of others in the same field and... I'm not prepared to move into a different field. I'd said goodbye to restaruant mgt many years back and I'm too old and been out of the game for too long for any serious interest. The most I can hope for is slinging hash (cooking) and cooking is a young man's game. In many ways my current situation has lead me down a path where simply moving foreward is near impossible. I'm not a programmer, I haven't kept up with technology and I'm not that sharp anymore. I'm banging my head to try and understand programming for android and unless you've got a job for corporate apps you're out in the cold. Freeware. scumware won't pay the bills.

There used to be a time where you could as the java saying goes write once run everywhere in flash. PC/Mac/Linux/Smartphones/ATMs/POS/Kiosks/Set atop (dvr/dvd players) It was everywhere whether the viewer knew it or not. Much more stable and consistent across platforms then even html5 is today. Write it in flash then if needed port it to an executable as simple as clicking publish. Those days are gone for good. And those that used to program for flash now have to work four times as hard for half the pay to achieve uniform output across the spectrum. Working in the flash field as I do not only am I living the downsize experience of a dying market I also see what's happening with the customer base (many good friends who have moved on away from flash) Thier jobs are disappearing as mine has. They on the otherhand are better equipped for the future then I am but we all face the same issue...ageism. It doesn't matter what a great track record you have or how much you've done the people who pay you think "you don't get it because you're not young anymore.

I'd say to anyone who is still under 30 get a trade. Truck driver, climate control, medical field. Something that is stable and pays better then unskilled labor. You'll do a lot better then an office job for long term security and may actually start out being paid more.

[ntom]

HTML5 is becoming a better option though, isn't? Since most browsers support it and it doesn't require a 3rd party program like Flash to run.

Also; I know Time Warner's Set top boxes still run a form of Java. They take a painstakingly long ass time to boot up, but especially while you are waiting for them to receive the activation hits from TWC servers...

[ntom]

Look; I was trying to edit my long ass post above because it has a bunch of typos in it, but apparently I clicked the wrong button, I think I quoted myself instead of edit. Whatever, I don't want to spam a bunch more posts to the thread, so just deal with all the typos.

[ntom]

whoops - ignore this.

[tapper mike]

HTML5 is becoming a better option though, isn't? Since most browsers support it and it doesn't require a 3rd party program like Flash to run.

Also; I know Time Warner's Set top boxes still run a form of Java. They take a painstakingly long ass time to boot up, but especially while you are waiting for them to receive the activation hits from TWC servers...

No,,,,


html5 is not universally supported. And is not the standard it is merely a working draft.
With html you have two governing bodies. W3C and ISO. They have different drafts for how they see the code as being implimented.

The W3C is an organization funded by browser manufacturers. Think of it like coaches being paid by different sports teams that decide on the rules of the game. The WC3 states that all web designers must code in a certain way to get approval. http://www.w3.org/Consortium/
Because they are paid to set the rules of uniformity by browser makers one would assume that browser makers would play by those rules.

Not at all. Each browser Safari, IE, Firefox etc in turn decide what they like and how it will be implimented. This means that features capabilites of one html page coded in a specific style may not be seen the same or break in a different browser.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison ... es_(HTML5)

With flash the flash player is universal. Meaning it will display the same in everything it's embedded to. SWF format is open even though the player is proprietal. Which means third party companies can make swf authoring tools (like mine) If Apple or Microsoft wanted to create a program in direct competition to adobe's flash and use the flash player they could. sdk's are available. The company I work for does http://swishzone.com as well as several others. The only thing is they have to apply the adobe standards rather then trying to develop a different coding language. Flash's coding language is ActionScript AS1,AS2,AS3 which is based on ecma (javascript) it's fairly easy to learn and easy to deploy. Apple and Microsoft have tried to go head to head with flash over the years and failed miserably. Silverlight and Quicktime are prime examples. Apple has gone so far as to sabotage the flash player from running properly in mac computers and even though flash was able to operate safely on ios devices apple banned flash from them.

Adobe has thrown in the towel with flash for the most part. They know they aren't going to retain apple costumers for thier other products by trying to blast apple. Instead they are working away from swf technology by shifting to flex and air which still use a lot of borrowed scripting from flash.

Many of our product (SWiSH Max) users also have flash but prefer working in the SM environment. It's faster and easier even though it's not as advanced as flash. A lot of what they do works great in swf format but easily becomes crippled / unuseable when trying to convert to html5 via swiffy. Which leads them down a path of still using our product for basic layout and some features which will parse through while having to throw out a lot of features that they could have easily used without parsing ala swiffy. https://www.google.com/doubleclick/studio/swiffy/

[ntom]

Huh, interesting. I have always been a proponent of HTML5 as my personal experience with it has largely been satisfying; in fact my website is based on html5 - as far as I can tell it loads the same on both Firefox and Chrome both mobile and non.
Of course, I am no coder, my personal experience with html5 has largely influenced my support of it, but aside from that, it wasn't based on any indepth knowledge of the system.

I will admit though, html5 runs faster than flash - at least, once again, in my own experiences.
Awhile back Google was beta testing html5 video players, I remember because I was one of the beta testers (that's not that amazing, so long as you knew the URL to the youtube beta you could be part of it) and I remember buffering was much smoother....though now they haven't seemed to of made the switch yet and I was beta testing that....probably a couple of years ago.

[ZenPunkHippy]

Looks like the OP dropped out of KVR

[V0RT3X]

Looks like the OP dropped out of KVR

Alright im going to bed.. it's 12:30am over here

[ntom]

Looks like the OP dropped out of KVR

tbh, I think he was just trolling, his post sounded more of a joke. I just was really interested with where the topic went that made me decide to post, I was in no way offering support to his situation - whether true or not. Simply aiding the conversation.

[Acid Mitch]

In Russia HS drops out of you.