Ask HN: Friend's 15 year old wants to drop out, I've been asked to intervene

Hello Mr. [Principal],

I've heard through sources that there have been various meetings conducted regarding my recent and overall academic performance at [private school]. I'd like to put some stuff on the table and get your thoughts on a few issues if you would take the time to read this. As background information I'd like you to know that I am the owner, CEO, and CTO of [hosting company], LLC a large Minecraft hosting company with over 5,000 clients and over $350,000 a year in revenue. We currently staff 12 employees and maintain a network of over 70 high powered server systems in a data-center located in [colo]. With that kept in mind I'd like to continue to discuss some issues that may have surfaced within your meetings.

Firstly I'd like to discuss the issue of character within this. As I heard you discussed this is a problem for you particularly because you feel that "If I was a good student I would simply do what is asked of me." While this may be a somewhat accurate statement, I would like you to think a little bit deeper into the fact that this is not pure rebellion, defiance, or lack of will. However, the core reason why I have not been completing a majority of assignments is due to the fact that my work is a full time job in which I'm constantly required to be present in the work environment as a crucial role to our day-to-day operations. My presence allows the company to be effective in providing our offerings as well as playing a crucial role in furthering the development of the company towards our end goals. Every minute that I'm away is time, and thus money, lost for the company.

As much as I would love to be able to complete everything that is requested of me I need to balance that out with thinking about the future of my business, and down the road, my life. There comes a time when there is simply from a mathematically validated standpoint, not enough time in the day to complete one's required duties for multiple operations (work and school) and still get a decent amount of sleep (I only get about 6 hours of sleep a night by the way.) You may also try to make the point that school should come before work, and my question to that is, why? Is it because it will prepare me academically in life? Well please refer to the below paragraph. Is it because I need to maintain social contact with people on a regular basis? Is there any reason why on-line relationships over Skype don't count when almost all elements of physical relationships are mirrored? If it's none of those what is it?

I'm going to be perfectly honest with you and I think if you keep an open mind, can understand where I'm coming from on the following issue: I think the modern school system is flawed from the perspective of someone who knows what their life's niche is. For me I already know I want to work in the server administration and networking area. Because of this my education should be tailored to what I want to learn, similar to college. The problem is, all information taught in lower level schooling is purely general information, which, up until grades 7+ is perfectly fine as it teaches you the basics of life, social skills, and various other things essential to becoming successful, however, once you get to the higher levels of general education you are met with a plethora of useless information that you will truly, never need in life. I have a general understanding of this because I'm currently living the life of a 15 year old adult, paying my bills, paying taxes, operating a business, managing employees, etc...

After doing much research (through polling a group of adults ages 25+) I have found that an overwhelming amount of them state that school is, and was, simply useless for their later life. I understand that if the information is not directly relevant to my future in life that the information can be used to expand my mind and critical thinking skills; however, I'd like you to consider that on my own time I am expanding my mind and critical thinking skills at a much more rapid rate than possible in a structured environment in which teachers have to attend to 20 or so other kids in addition to the distractions and other deterrents in those types of environments. I can go into much more detail on that but for sake of keeping this E-Mail short I won't; maybe we can have an in-person talk sometime regarding this because I hope to be understood in these matters even though I know it may go against the current prevailing thoughts on schooling.

One point I know that was brought up was regarding the fact that "Minecraft hosting won't last forever." Any reasonable person would of course agree with this statement, games are temporal, and will soon be "out of date" or "old fashioned", but what I don't think is fully understand is that we have a business structure setup to last which features many expansions planned in the near future bringing VPS Hosting, Cloud Hosting, web-hosting, voice server hosting, DayZ Hosting, among many others, and I can tell you many of these things will be around for as long as the Internet exists. For perspective, VPS and cloud hosting are the backbone of the 21st century Internet, allowing thousands of websites to operate properly with millions of visitors, and because of this is a rapidly expanding and solid market for the future.

In conclusion I would again like to remind you that anything said here was said not out of hate, or disrespect (as I have utmost respect for you and the other administrators), but rather, I'm just sharing my thoughts and opinions to get your feedback as to them. Thank you for you time. I look forward to your response whether it be in person or via E-Mail.

(P.S. I'd like to state that the validity of my sources is questionable and may not be 100% accurate. If I made any false claims please let me know.)

-- Kind Regards, [Kid] (CEO/CTO) of [hosting company]

I dropped out of high school in grade 11. I wish I had done it sooner. I am 29.

Unfortunately, I had no support from anyone and ran away from home to get away. School made me want to kill myself, every day. I stopped doing it, I flunked everything, my computers at home got taken away in response. My entire life had become a prison.

Some things that have bothered me:

-Not going to college and feeling like I missed out was a big complex for a long time, feeling like I was falling behind socially and intellectually (which is true but not all bad). I was not prepared for the social skills that people develop there in the process of mentally/emotionally beating each other the head. I have had to deal with peers more socially skilled than I using tricks and experience to throw me off many times, which I see in retrospect having gained enough experience.

-Also not going to college has stunted my intellectual development. I am not as good as I could be and I know it, though I also know that I would likely have had the same social difficulties and not succeeded there anyway. Something like Khan Academy, some guidance, and some support would have helped with this, but perhaps even then I would have been a bit behind my peers earning PhDs, I would have no way to know.

-Peers often hold their degree over me, to this day. Along with this, being judged and stigmatized as "the dropout" and being treated by old peers as inferior no matter what kind of success I achieve, possibly because I am different and they are somewhat uncomfortable with that.

-The road of achievement, especially early on, without the support of a social group or educational institution that I could deal with, was probably a lot more hellish than it should have been. I was naive to a lot of things and didn't have the experience or understanding as to how to apply myself. Especially being a runaway and not being able to take care of myself, but feeling that I had no other options and had no support from anyone made me feel hopeless and desperate and gave me a huge chip on my shoulder, swinging between "I'm fucked and should just crawl in a gutter" and "I have to fight to get revenge" for half a decade+.

My perception by relation to my own experience (probably flawed somewhat) They are going to nail this kid as a cocky bullshitter. Cocky, sure, but that's because they are attacking him for being himself and it's a defensive response to that. Supporting his ego phase is going to be difficult, but try to remember that they are trying to cut him down for trying to be what he is and doing what his brain does. Defiantly labeling oneself CEO at that age and standing up for yourself aggressively is all about grasping for power where you have none.

Hastily typed, hope it is useful, obviously not complete.

Going to go against the grain here and say that intervention may not be necessary.

I think he wrote a very good letter explaining his situation and that understands the rewards/consequences. If he feels 100% comfortable with dropping out, and is ok with not going to college to have fun, learn things that would actually interest him, and make more connections, then by all means, it would be a better choice to drop out.

very helpful.

my biggest fear is that his parents are gonna die on this hill and as soon as he's legally emancipated he'll sever communications.