Post: #1

I was wondering and couldnt find another thread on it.

It would seem to me that in general successful people either coasted through highschool (little effort, above average results) or just didn't try at all (dropped out or performed well below average) before transitioning into an entrepreneur or in touch with reality guy.

I also know a lot of you white collar folks must have busted your ass in highschool and then through university but now have high-paying jobs and successful lives.

Curious which of you did what and where you are now because of it

(Title was supposed to be *were*. Im on my phone)

Post: #2

I definitely was. I went to an all-boys school so there wasn't much in the way of distraction. Still, I really worked my ass off and did well in the courses I enjoyed and the best I could in courses I disliked. Especially in the courses that I didn't like, I remember being really stressed out about getting good grades, etc.

^ Weird, but I had this thought yesterday during work: High school (and school in general) prepares you to be a good cog in the machine - a good employee, a good order-taker. Sometimes, the most diligent students in high school can't create their own systems. They might be good at what they do, but that skillset always needs to be within someone else's system. That "someone else" may or may not have been a good student in high school, but they had the balls to create their own business, their own system.

At the same time, my high school had us read quite a bit of challenging stuff. This reading provided the foundation for a life-long love of reading and knowledge. It also made certain that I don't sound like a complete dumbass as an adult.

College was a completely different situation...

Post: #3

Horrible in high school, excellent in college the very next year

Just a few years of maturing and being in an actual environment for learning really helped

Post: #4

I'm a late-bloomer, both socially and Game-wise, and was excellent in both high school and college. I graduated among the top five in my class, and agree with Baldwin81's assessment of high school.

Post: #5

Good thread.

I wasn't good in high school. In 9th grade I had mostly 1s or 2s and I had to repeat it. It was because I was playing/hacking with my computer all the time. In 10th grade I got expelled from school because of the grades and bad behaviour. Actually after 9th grade my class head teacher pushed me to go into trade school and become a train driver or smt. But I finished the high school somehow at night school, got very good results in the exams and got accepted into university and finished that one with ease.

Now couple of days ago I saw girl from my old high school who always had all straight 5's serving soup in a super market caffee where I went before a business meeting. I on the other hand own and run 2 software companies and work as a manager in a big corporation.

Post: #6

This is no exaggeration. I was really lucky to even graduate high school. I think the main problem was that in high school you are required to take countless classes and have to do daily homework in those classes. With sports and the beach being right there, school was just way too much for me at that point in my life. College was better because you would basically have about four classes and could get by without doing daily work. Law school may have been even better because for most classes, you only had to worry about the final exam. If you were a good learner and a good test taker, you could probably evenly completely slack off in law school and get good grades.

I basically knew nothing when I graduated high school. I knew college was my only chance, so about three weeks into freshman I quit all sports and made sure I put a full effort into college. When I first started in college, I was unable to fill up a whole page with words in English. I could barely string more than a few sentences together. I did decent, but not great, in my first semester of college. After the first semester, I think I made Dean's List every semester and graduated with a good G.P.A. I remember years ago telling some guy that I did really bad in high school and he told me that he also did really bad. I then asked him were he went to college and he told me Johns Hopkins. Yeah, that guy really did absolutely horrible in high school. Bollocks.

I think the reverse must be way more common. There are high school valedictorians who completely screw up in college and people with 4.0s who flunk out. I think many of those people were really tied down in high school and had no idea what to do once they got some independence.

Post: #7

I believe I was poisoned in high school. The mantra of being obedient and you will be successful was a lie. 13 years later I had to relearn everything and get used to pissing people off. High school just proves you can read, write, do math and understand how to learn. Success come from resisting being told what to do, taking care of yourself first and understanding what is REALLY going on. Make life your bitch.

Post: #8

Being the first son whose both parents are physicians my career choice was either zdravnik, doctor or Arzt. That meant that I really had to work hard through high school in order to get good enough grades to be accepted into a med school (in my 4th year now).

Besides that my father was also very athletic so I also had to train a sport at a competitive level. He decided that tennis would be the best option for me, which I didn't really like because I felt that it lacked the companionship and spirit team sports had. Odd, because when I started kick - boxing I felt a lot of positive energy and brotherly bonds between myself and other trainees which I missed at tennis. Even though both are individual sports. Must be players they attract then. But I was a good son so I followed his lead.

So my high school experience looked a bit like that kid in school yard movies who only learns and does sport without any kind of fun. It could get quite frustrating because my father until now was never quite satisfied with me. If I had a 4 (a B in the American grading system I believe) I'd listen for hours that I did not learn enough, work enough and etc. ... despite the fact that besides that test I aced three others.

Looking back now I laugh because even though we're Slovenians it looked like that typical Asian family where the son must learn until dawn lest he shames his family.

Oh well, the thing I missed was the time when I would be able to read books that interested me. I just can't read all the time about photosynthesis, Yugoslavian battles, revolutions, Shakespeare, Catcher in the Rye (really didn't like this book), algorithms, molecules, forces... presented in such a dry way like high school text books.

I wanted to read about philosophy, economy, politics, rhetoric, history (but written in an interesting way - !), poetry, computers... yet my father always scolded me that it's a waste of time. That's why I got quite anxious in my 4th year of high school. Never had the time to relax. Always study, always exams, followed by the big one that would determine if I would get into a good school.

Thinking about it as I type... I am not surprised any longer that nowadays youth has so many psychological problems. Many parent just don't give them the time to unwind and do something else besides school work.

But I do not blame my father. He did the best he could. I believe he didn't want me to turn out like his father who always read and philosophized about grand things like injustice, fair economical systems, the afterlife... without ever taking his sons to a playground or fishing.

After I enrolled into med school things got really dark after 3 years... but now I feel much better. Not really a coincidence though as I discovered this site about one year ago.

TLDR - I was a good student in high school. Didn't have much of a choice really.

Post: #9

I was a smart kid but poor student. I was a "C" student but somehow made it on the academic pentathlon team. Teacher said I was a smart kid that just doesn't do his homework. Our team won in part due to a great essay I wrote. I have no idea what the hell I wrote about at this point but my teachers were congratulating me. I was just a lazy student that spent too much time drawing cartoons and daydreaming unless it was a topic I found really interesting. I've always had a problem with focus.

Post: #10

I was a C student mainly because I cut classes and got suspended so much that I missed a lot of time, I threw some epic house parties in high school though, especially senior year and was voted party animal of the year by my graduating class. I made it to uni and that was the dumbest decision I ever made, I wish I had gone to trade school or did some technical training when I was 18.

Post: #11

(06-30-2015 01:23 PM)Baldwin81 Wrote:  I definitely was. I went to an all-boys school so there wasn't much in the way of distraction. Still, I really worked my ass off and did well in the courses I enjoyed and the best I could in courses I disliked. Especially in the courses that I didn't like, I remember being really stressed out about getting good grades, etc.

How'd you like being at an all-boys school? Was the staff still majority female (like the public school system) or was it men teaching? I can picture an all-boys school being a whole lot better for a boy these days than our modern day public school system...

Post: #12

(06-30-2015 02:08 PM)Thandran Wrote:  Oh well, the thing I missed was the time when I would be able to read books that interested me.

Thinking about it as I type... I am not surprised any longer that nowadays youth has so many psychological problems. Many parent just don't give them the time to unwind and do something else besides school work.

I think in a way Highschool killed my interest in learning/reading/being productive.

I probably could of liked catcher in the rye, but god knows if I have to write an analysis on every thing or take notes while I read, then I start viewing reading books as tasks instead of hobbies.

In addition, I live in southern Ontario which is known for being really business and white collar type education. I'm a blue collar trades kinda guy so my time in highschool was spent learning (or pretending to learn) about stuff I didn't care about/ would be applicable in my life.

For most highschool kids, once you've finished 6 hours of school, a few hours of work maybe, there's no chance you're going home and studying for those tests.

Post: #13

Not at all. I was to busy having sex with everything that moved, the only reason I did not get held back year after year was because I got in the 90th percentile on the Georgia Basic Skills Test. I pretty much stunk it up in grade wise college too, fucked a lot of women and got wasted.I did well on the LSAT so law school happened. Standardized testing has been saving my ass for quite some time.

Post: #14

(06-30-2015 02:12 PM)speakeasy Wrote:  I was a smart kid but poor student. I was a "C" student but somehow made it on the academic pentathlon team. Teacher said I was a smart kid that just doesn't do his homework. Our team won in part due to a great essay I wrote. I have no idea what the hell I wrote about at this point but my teachers were congratulating me. I was just a lazy student that spent too much time drawing cartoons and daydreaming unless it was a topic I found really interesting. I've always had a problem with focus.

Sounds a lot like me. Through middle school I was put into alternate learning programs to keep me 'challenged'. My teachers said I was gifted and I probably spent less than an hour ever studying from elementary- grade 9. They tried to transfer me to an advanced academics school but I stayed with my home highschool so i could keep my friends and join a rugby team.

Been coasting since then.

Where are you now as a result? and what'd you do post-secondary?

Post: #15

Best thread title ever. Very suitable for such a topic

I was a mediocre student. Mostly coasted through with B-s and A-, though i often dipped into C territory during the year. That isn't to say i didn't learn anything. My high school was so good, i didn't really learn anything new in college. I was just playing the liberal arts regurgitated game at that point.

I never was a good test taker in the past. I attribute this to being unable to handle pressure something i've worked on quite a bit to overcome. I'm curious to see if i would do better as an adult student.

Post: #16

(06-30-2015 02:26 PM)Renzy Wrote:  How'd you like being at an all-boys school? Was the staff still majority female (like the public school system) or was it men teaching? I can picture an all-boys school being a whole lot better for a boy these days than our modern day public school system...

TL;DR: It is a lot better, but one needs to learn to adapt quickly to modern society upon graduation.

Overall I liked it. An all-boys school (even if it's coat and tie) really toughens you up socially. Thinking back, mid-way through and after Freshman year there were a handful of kids to left or transferred. Those kids came from public middle school.

I'll explain this at the end, but the good things about an all-boys school can be negated if you are not somewhat able to adapt to modern culture.

The school had female faculty, but the majority of the teachers were men. As you can imagine, sports were everything. Between school, sports, and homework, my day wouldn't finish until pretty late. Especially for being high school-age, I remember being pretty fucking tired.

Fair play though, not being around girls at that age was bad.. especially when you're like 15 or 16 and you're just so horny that it hurts! This also made interactions with girls (when they happened) much more awkward because you just don't have the experience.

The above paragraph leads into my biggest issue with all-boys school. It's not the school's fault, per se, and you could find this with someone coming out of any type of school, but if you put most kids through all boys high school, he's going to head to college with next to zero female experience. He's also going to have a certain "old school" red-pill mindset. A lot of kids I graduated with were easy marks for girls looking to hop off the cock carousel. They grew into being good enough-looking dudes with careers. Some of their parents had money and even the kids whose parents didn't have money understood the unspoken class-signifiers that you see among people who've had money for a bit.

^In short, they had a lot going for them on paper, but the newer generation of female was able to prey on their "old school" red pill mindset.

I went completely nuts (pussy, drugs, pussy, and more drugs) and almost failed out of college, but found RooshV in the dark days of post graduate DC life. A handful of my high school friends are "alphas" in that old school sense - they're living the "American Dream" - even though it's way more expensive and fraught with way more difficulty. Otherwise, you see a lot of dudes who just got picked up and hitched up to the first woman who really put it on them. If not for Roosh, pre-Heartiste Roissy, and (last but not least) Virgle Kent, I would have been one of those latter guys.

Fifteen or so years on though, all-boys school is an overall much better deal that whatever the hell is going on in today’s public school system. Still, you need to be an autodidact when it comes to stepping out into the real world. As we all know, life isn’t a leafy green campus where everyone wears coats, ties, and studies Latin.

Post: #17

I was a very bad student and a real 'brat'. I'm pretty smart but not 'school smart'. So i didn't really go there to learn but more to show up so my parents wouldn't get pissed at me. I never really knew what my interests were or what i wanted to become later in life at that time so i just kind of half-assed it all the way.

Then puberty hit, got kicked out of 3 schools and eventually went to a different kind of school where i would work for 3 days and go to school for 2 and that's around the time i started wising up a little. Got some great work experience and recommendations as well as a degree (albeit a lesser one compared to a 'good' school).

Currently evaluating my options when it comes to getting a university degree abroad in the EU. Looks like i'm going to have to wait until i'm 21 and then take a test.

Post: #18

I was always the super-smart socially awkward kid. My parents drilled into me that anything less than 90% academically (tests, projects, etc.) was unacceptable. Received honours with distinction in all three years, whilst taking full AP courses and playing high-school football and hockey to boot.

Ended up with grades that would get me into any university, in any program, in Canada. Eventually I joined the military and had my degree paid for.

That was at the cost of not even kissing a girl until discovering game in the summer period between first and second-year university.

Moral of the story is: don't over-educate and under-skill your children.

Post: #19

I don't remember anything from high school other than playing football. I graduated but it took me a few extra years than most people. It didn't seem to matter, I'm doing quite well.

Post: #20

I was a bad student but have always been very smart. Fuck doing homework, simply getting A's on the test and quizzes was how I coasted through high school. College has been awesome for me because homework is optional, Ace the tests and you are golden.

Post: #21

To smart for my own good, not genius enough to continue coasting after high school and got a real shock in college when I found out I could not coast along anymore. It took me time to get over that.

Post: #22

(06-30-2015 07:20 PM)HighSpeed_LowDrag Wrote:  That was at the cost of not even kissing a girl until discovering game in the summer period between first and second-year university.

Moral of the story is: don't over-educate and under-skill your children.

I was shielded in my earlier years of highschool. No going out with friends past like 8 and my parents had to know their parents. Lost my virginity when I was 15 cause I lucked out and a girl approached me.

That all gave me killer confidence so I broke up with her and kinda worked my way into becoming more social and less of a nest-dwelling loser. Going back, I wouldve built all my foundations the second I walked into that highschool. That shits important.

Post: #23

I was the worst. I dropped out and went to work in my uncles dirty mechanic shop. After a year of that hell hole I went back to school and maintained straight A's until I got bored, dropped out again and joined the Army. Got bored of that and decided to go to college. Maintained a high gpa and, you guessed it, dropped out and moved to Mexico.

I now live in Serbia and run a tourism company. Can't say I miss high school much.

Post: #24

Awful in high school. Bare minimum to get by. Did nothing unless I had interest in the subject.
This behavior continued in college for the first two years until I picked myself up and went hard, graduating in 4 years + extra semester. (BS Computer Science)

Post: #25

I was a terrible student. I never took notes, slept in class, and never did my homework. I mean, literally, never did my homework. Teachers would just automatically fill in a zero for me. They asked my father if I was using heroin.

Despite all of this, I got A's on all of my tests that I actually tried on. When I took geometry, the teacher didn't care if you did your homework, and he didn't care if you showed work on tests. All that mattered was that you got the right answer. I finished the year with a 100% average. He separated me from the rest of the class during tests and quizzes. Instead of kicking me out of class for sleeping, like he would others, he would tell everyone I'm taking in the lesson subliminally.

I still question the validity of my high school diploma. In order to graduate, I needed a 100 to hit the minimum grade for the year. There's no way I did that. My report card read 65.2. In other words, I graduated high school by 2/10 of a point.

I won't go into college, because that was just a massive failure. I think the biggest mistake was majoring in business instead of computers. It's not that I don't like learning. I just hate school.