Your educational level?

[SoulRaven]

I graduated from the school of hard-knocks in life.

i went to the same school

 

[Zizzer_Zazzer_Zuz]

Dropped out the second week of 11th grade when i realized I was better read than my English teacher. Got my GED (in my home state there is no GED really, I have a full HS diploma. Nowhere on that piece of paper does it say GED).

After that I spent a year + on the streets. Ended up with bleeding ear infections (both ears), a tonsillitis, and pneumonia at 17 and ended up going home for a few months since I was refused care at the hospital.

Put myself through CC on my dime working full time, going to school part time and living in a 3 bedroom apartment with 11 other people. I never finished.

I got a free ride at a small private 4 year University and screwed that up. BIGGEST. MISTAKE. EVER.

Less than a year later I was a father and working the counter at a bagel shop.

Fast forward a bit and I acquired several IT certificates and eventually started doing IP-Sec for ... uh ... well, never you mind about that. Lets just say that I did in fact help build The Internet. More an Internet plumber than an architect but still.

 

[Theadyn]

Waited a few years after high school to go to a trade school, hair, which I did for 9 years. Started in on college aiming for a BS in computer science, got my AS in that but switched to radiology and got my AAS in that, for which I did xray for 10 years. Fast forward to now, wrist injury prevents me continuing that, so it's back to school I go. Since I'm looking for something to go into not quite so physically demanding on the still bum wrist, I'm combining the computer science and the medical degrees along with aiming for something portable that I can do for work online. No, it won't be a "dream job", whatever that is, but it will allow me to continue to work, even with this wrist, and work anywhere with net connection. And still don't know what I want to do when I grow up!

 

[Belinda2]

I have a top secret security clearance, so I am not allowed to say.

 

[ArtW]

Richard, regarding your post in which you identify with my statement, (#29) I had the misfortune to be in schools where grading was based more on class and schoolwork, so despite acing tests, c to c- average
One of my counselors once said

"I know you can do the work, your test scores show that, and in my day as a teacher, you would have been graded high based on that alone, but now we do it by homework and classwork, due to changes in how school is taught / graded"

"I'm frigging bored, we spend the first 1/3 of the year relearning the year before last, the next year relearning last year, and only in the last trimester do we learn new stuff, by which time I've already gone forward in the texts and self taught, maybe advanced classes based on my test scores?"

"first you gotta prove you can handle it, by doing all the class and homework"

*pointing at my file* "those test scores are the proof I can handle it"

"that's not how it works"

"then it works WRONG"

This discussion occurred in the 4th grade
lol

 

[Optimistic Paranoid]

I have a top secret security clearance, so I am not allowed to say.

Ah!  Another graduate of the University of Area 51, eh?  How's Project Retract Maple coming along?

 

[BigT]

I got pretty screwed by the school system when I was a kid, and if I think about it enough (I rarely do these days) I still feel a little resentful.  

When I was in the 2nd grade, nobody knew what "Anxiety" was, so they labeled me with a "Learning Disability" and tossed me into a class with kids who truly were learning disabled.  I'm talking kids in special wheelchairs, helmeted heads, drooling vegetables, and violent outbursts.  
Even as a kid, I knew I wasn't supposed to be there, but they didn't give me an option so I cut more classes than I attended.    
     
I got stuck in special ed for my entire school life, straight through my senior year of high school when I finally had enough of them teaching me absolutely NOTHING and told my teacher to go f*ck herself.  That's when they kicked me out.   I didn't get my GED 'till I was in my 30's.  I only got it then because I injured my back in my 30's, lost my high paying, union job driving concrete trucks, and feared I'd never be able to get another high paying, no degree-requiring gig again.  I didn't get back into driving for 14 years.    

By this time my father had been dead for several years and my mother was well on her way to her career in alcoholism, so she didn't seem to care much that I was cutting school.

Fast forward to 2012....

In 2012, after years of bouncing from one lousy job to another, or not working at all, and countless CC courses that lead nowhere, I landed a position that would change my luck completely, and hopefully 'till retirement.  I got a job driving corporate coaches for Apple (no college degree or heavy lifting necessary).  Now I drive coaches for another high tech company and make a 6-figure salary doing it.  Not bad for sitting on your butt all day, driving a luxury coach and eating free, gourmet food!
I'm using their free WiFi right now, while sitting at a table in one of the leather bucket seats of my coach, eating my free lunch, to write this.  

I don't always love what I do, but given my regrettable, and likely avoidable, educational past and my "disability", I feel very fortunate to be making a decent living now, especially living in the SF Bay Area in my early 50's, and without a college degree.  

I've got a lot of CC courses under my belt, but no degree.  I did, however, get all the classes, and then some, that I missed in high school, while I was there, so I don't feel it was a complete waste of time.

 

[Blanch]

I completed high school and went straight to the university. I majored in Geological sciences with a minor in physics. One winter break I went to Yosemite for a week. I stayed. I got a job in Yosemite and did not return to the university.

Years later the coursework I took got my foot in the door in the computer field. I took a vocational school program for computer programming and completed it. Later in life I went to CC and got an AA degree. I also have several IT certifications. I had a nice career in computers for the duration of my working years, but ended up with an illness and disability in my 50's.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[OutdoorFT]

From the sounds of it..I should go back.

Diploma, some college. Hate school though.

 

[Gary68]

yep,my 3rd grade stupid teacher sent me to special ed,the smart special ed teacher looked at my grades which were good and gave me some quizzes which i answered correctly took me back to stupid teacher and said "he is dyslexic,let him be"

and its not just mental it's physical too,i am right handed but my handwriting comes out like a left handed person wrote it and i high jumped like a left hand person

dyslexia is a blanket statement for anyone out of the norm,the only problem is i have yet to meet anyone the was in the norm

 

[frater secessus]

Ph.D. dropout. I relate most to Richard's experience, especially the darkside stuff.

Intelligence can be an fearsome tool for self-injury. At some point one either learns how to handle sharp knives or succumbs to the resulting damage.