From The Literary Hub:
For some of you, school is officially in full swing. The newness has worn off a bit, and the dreaded homework has set in. Perhaps you’re already tired of it all. Officially, I am here to tell you: stay in school. School is worthwhile and our dismal public education system is what is going to destroy/has already destroyed this country. But it’s true that there are lots of notable visionaries, literary and otherwise, who dropped out of school—or were kicked out—for one reason or another. You probably already know about some of these: Mark Twain, Jack Kerouac, Jack London, William Faulkner, Harper Lee, F. Scott Fitzgerald, etc. But things are a bit different now, so I’ve tried to keep this list a bit closer to contemporary. Below, a list of successful writers who quit school, took a break, got expelled, and became intellectual superstars anyway.
. . . .
Shirly Jackson matriculated at the University of Rochester . . . and would have been part of the class of 1938 had she not dropped out after her sophomore year. Or, I suppose “dropped out” isn’t exactly the right term—her grades were so bad that year that at the end of it she was asked to leave. In her biography of Jackson, Ruth Franklin notes that the writer later commented that she had been kicked out “because I refused to go to any classes because I hated them.” She spent the next year writing, forcing herself to produce at least a thousand words a day, and when she applied to Syracuse University she did so with the goal of making writing her career. She matriculated there in September 1937, quickly found her feet, began publishing her work, and graduated in 1940.
. . . .
As you’ll know doubt know if you’ve ever read one of his novels, Cormac McCarthy doesn’t do things by halves—he’s more likely to do them double. So you may not be shocked to learn that he didn’t drop out of the University of Tennessee once, but twice. The first time was in 1953, to join the Air Force. He was discharged in 1957, and shortly thereafter re-enrolled, studying physics and engineering, before dropping out again after another two years, withdrawing in 1959. According to Willard P. Greenwood’s Reading Cormac McCarthy, it was during this second stint at college that McCarthy developed his distinctive punctuation style (read: very sparse punctuation). An English professor hired him to edit a book of eighteenth century essays, and in the process, McCarthy “developed his distaste for the semicolon and . . . came to the realization that punctuation is not essential to clear writing.” Well, I suppose he got something worthwhile out of college, even if he didn’t get a degree.
. . . .
Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing barely even started high school: she attended an all-girls Roman Catholic convent school in what is now Harare. She hated it, and eventually was allowed to come home at age thirteen—only to be sent away again to a boarding school. It was better, but she still hated it, and after coming down with a debilitating case of pinkeye, she refused to go on with her education. At the age of fourteen, she quit forever. In The Golden Notebook, she wrote:
Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: ‘You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself—educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.
More robust and individual indeed.
Link to the rest at The Literary Hub
I was expelled from a convent school near the end of the 4th grade for “excessive insolence” (and they weren’t wrong).
If only it had stopped there. I could have just read hundreds of books each year and accomplished much more instead of wasting all that time reading hundreds of books under my desk in class instead.
At least I saved myself — I refused to waste (my father’s) money pursuing an advanced degree and turned to a business career before retiring to write.
Go ahead and point out the few who dropped out and succeeded, more power to them, but how does that compare with the ones who dropped out and kept on falling?
I know more of them.
Or the ones that completed their schoolin’ and still keep on failin’? 😉
I know a few of those too. But not nearly as many as the ones who dropped out and failed. My experience is that some people are strong enough to make their own path, but most aren’t without the aid of institutions. Sure, I’ve met a few homeless high school and college graduates, some with advanced degrees. And a few homeless who are glad to be homeless. But most seem to be folks who just never fit in, never learned the ropes, never got the right opportunities.
I don’t think it’s fair to to the ones who didn’t make it when we suggest that dropping out is a smart career move. It may be for the very strong and the very lucky, but not for most folks.
Myself, I have been lucky. Got some breaks, stumbled a few times and made it through, but I met a lot on the way who didn’t.
Dropping out of or being expelled from an institution of higher education doesn’t provide the same setbacks to a writing career that not graduating from an institution of lower education leaves a person with. I can admire and respect those who dropped out of or were expelled from lower education yet who still manage to succeed. As for those who dropped out of or who were expelled from college, they were deprived of nothing except whatever money they’d paid for their entry into the institution.
No wonder I’m disadvantaged at this writing business, I finished school (well, HS anyway, and in TX – so maybe it didn’t do the full damage … 😛 )