Graduating High School A Year Early
Starting my adult life early, and learning to follow the beat of my own drum.
When many of my friends first heard about my plans to graduate early, they looked at me like I was crazy. They said that I wasn’t getting the “authentic high school experience”. To that I say “So What?”
The way I see it, graduating early is not just about rushing through the curriculum, but rather a chance to start my life a year early. It means that if I know what I want to do, I can go out and do it. It means that I don’t have to put up with silly high school drama and cliques. I can take on adult responsibilities, at 16.
Now, you may be wondering how I am going about doing this. It’s a question I get asked often, and there are several answers.
#1: My alternative high school
The high school I attend is one of a kind because it allows students to work at their own pace. No one tells me when I have to turn in an assignment, or when I have to take a test. I get to decide. Personally, I’ve used this to my advantage, in order to breeze through the concepts I find easy and spend more time on the ones I don’t.
The image above more accurately represents how we spend our time, when compared with typical high school students.
Additionally, the way our learning is structured means that you can choose how much you want to do on a daily basis. No one forcing me to spend a whole semester on a course. In fact, in my first three months of high school, I finished the whole of my grade 10 coursework.
#2: Motivation
When I talk to my friends about being so ahead in school, they brush it off by saying that I’m just that smart. But in reality, this is only a tiny factor. As the title suggests, motivation plays a much bigger role. I think that if I wasn’t motivated to finish high school early, I wouldn’t. Because it takes effort. Effort that probably won’t come easily if there isn’t an end goal. Just like with any goal, if you don’t have a reason, a drive to achieve, a motivation, then that goal is probably for nothing.
#3: Going the extra mile every day
Like mentioned previously, embarking on such a task takes effort. And if I didn’t go home every day and do extra work, work that everyone else would only get to several months later, my early graduation wouldn’t have been a possibility.
For most of my peers, their time away from school is reserved for sports, relaxing, watching TV, and other activities. But what if, instead of collapsing on the couch after getting home, you sit down and keep working? You put in an extra two hours a day. The results, speak for themselves.
When I finished grade 10 back in November, my friends asked me what I was going to do for the rest of the year. They suggested I take a break, relax. They said, if they were in my shoes, they would take the rest of the year off. Instead of listening to their advice, I told them that I would just keep going. As soon as I finished grade 10, I started grade 11. And finished it. Next school year, I will be a full year ahead.
Within my friend group, there have been various reactions to my accomplishments, and I must say that not all of them have been pleasant. I’ve found that some people are less likely to listen to my, when I am ahead. All I want to do is rant a little about the assignments I have to complete and the workload I have. That’s what teens do in high school nowadays. Sometimes everyone just needs to complain a little bit about the amount of work they have. Yet, my attempts to relate to my friends always seem to miss the mark.
“You don’t get to complain, because you’re ahead” “You’re just smart, not all of us can do that.”
When my own friends say things like that, I must admit, that it hurts. It feels like all the hustle I’ve devoted is being ignored.
From this experience, I’ve learned that sometimes the people around you don’t always have your back. When you are succeeding, others don’t always care. Even your own friends may be too busy or too jealous to care about your successes. Something that anyone can do in order to accomplish more, is to focus on themselves instead. When I stopped caring what everyone else’s plans were, I was able to focus on my own. I was able to do what was right for me, and for my future.
The one thing that kept me going throughout the school year, despite what anyone said, was knowing that in thirty years, when I look back, I’m not going to remember who I graduated with, but rather how I graduated. In the long run, it’s not just about graduating early. It’s about freeing up an extra year to figure out what I want to do with my life. And it might just be the difference between a future job and a career.
