Throughout my schooling experience I was deeply interested in cryptography, electronics, and theoretical computer science. By middle school, I was writing drivers in x86 assembly, reading Shannon and Turing, building radio transmitters, and I spent my time daydreaming about information flows through the natural world.
In high school I was teaching myself linear algebra and studying modern cryptography. I stopped sleeping at night so I could study, program, and build. I simply had to. I even got rid of my bed to make room for more lab benches and I just slept in class. No one ever supported me, my parents were pissed, and I had no way to know that what I was doing was valuable. I was acting on pure passion. Everyone thought I was an idiot for not putting school first.
Exhausted, I eventually begged my high school counselor to let me drop out. She cried and begged me to stay, which I did. I graduated #3 in my class and simply gave up on all of my studies out frustration and exhaustion. I hated school so much the thought of college made me sick. I eventually convinced myself that all the learning I did was bullshit. I forgot it all.
After years of working shit jobs, occasional homelessness, and general misery, I started college. I placed into beginning algebra and started all over again. Ten math classes and five years later, I'm about where I was in high school. I'm re-reading all the papers I once read and revisiting all of my old ideas. Turns out all that stuff I was learning takes people years of college to learn and I did it all the way back in middle school and high school. I'm much slower now, below average even. I feel like the stress of adulthood has taken its toll on my mind.
My biggest regret is not dropping out of school. People in here saying it's the most important thing--speak for yourselves. School was an incredibly painful and damaging experience. I did not learn there, it was too slow, too early in the morning, and too distracting. Much of the work I was doing at home then is now patented and published and I have nothing to show for it except a shitty diploma from some high school. I realize I'm not the typical case, but I think the mindless push for schooling is quite dangerous. People think all kids are idiots, but that is dead wrong. The young mind is powerful, but fragile. Our society does not know how to guide or encourage it.
I had a friend like me, but they medicated him in 9th grade and he had some bad reaction and lost his mind completely. He died of an overdose a few years ago. I remember him driving his remote control cars with robotic arms attached through the hallways in middle school and him getting into so much trouble for it--it was good times until they made him take pills. I can't help but feel some hatred for this system.