Straight A's until 4th grade when a teacher stole my pet turtle during show-and-tell to put in her turtle pond and fed my parents some bullshit about how I was too young for a pet turtle - which made me question whether formal education was actually a good idea and whether or not teachers were really the beacons of wisdom they claimed (considering one could just be a lying cunt of a turtle-thief.) I started staying up every night studying on my own (typically math/physics/computing/electronics/herpetology) and kind of wanted to be a herpetologist (it was the only reason I bothered at school after that point at all - who's going to hire or give money to a herpetologist that's self-educated after-all.) In highschool my father convinced me I would make more money if I focused on computers instead of herpetology so I focused on that while sticking to physics/herpetology on the side. Tried to take college courses in freshman year for computing and physics - aced all the tests (IQ and aptitude tests in the top 0.0000001 percentile - placement tests all at the level of a college senior) but they refused to let me test out of highschool to start on college coursework because the local administrator thought I would spruce up their scores. The next couple years became a pissing contest between me and the school administrators until I dropped out and joined the Army doing communication work. Ended up going into IT and programming, wrote the business intelligence software for use internally by one of the world's largest corporations and did contracting work on the side. Had a bit of a mid-life crisis at 25 when I realized the only things I had accomplished in life outside of the military were composed of virtual bits and started shifting toward engineering (via IT/programming initially) and enjoying it much more. Currently trying to save up enough money to start a private amphibian and reptile zoo because I still don't like computers more than herpetology (though my father's advice was sound in that herps are not a viable way to make a living, more just an enormous expense) while playing around with nanotech and high energy physics in my personal lab. Still trying to pick up synthetic bio (much harder than physics from my standpoint) but otherwise I'd say I've learned everything independently I've set out to learn and it worked pretty well for me financially.