Do I need to finish high school if my parents don't care either way?

I don’t see why I need to waste my time in high school. My parents don’t seem to care—they didn’t finish it— but I know people say high school is important. What do you think?

The Dad understands that. When The Dad was in high school, The Dad didn’t have a good answer for why it was important. It sure didn’t feel like it. The Dad will tell you about Mrs. McGill, who had such a profound answer that he remember it still.

Mrs. McGill counts as one of those people that taught The Dad a lesson that stayed with him his entire life. The backstory was that the Dad was a junior in high school and had practiced not paying attention enough that Mrs. McGill sounded the alarm and The Dad’s parents engaged, because there was a better-than-not chance that The Dad was going to have to spend a fifth year in high school.

Now, The Dad had been kicked out of Spanish and geometry at that point, and part of the problem is The Dad didn’t see a practical need for any of it. The Dad didn’t have an interest in business, or in being a preacher… and didn’t have a very engaging hobby…

So finally Mrs. McGill called The Dad into her office and she said, “You need to be thoughtful about the choices you make, specifically in unintentionally limiting your options.” She went on to say, “If you graduate from high school, then you have a choice. You can choose to go to work, or you can choose to go to college, or split your time between the two. But when you make the choice, either consciously or by your actions, to not finish high school, you’ve also made the choice not to go to college. And in your life, you should be aware of making choices that inadvertently limit other choices.”

Dave Ramsey talks about the concept of opportunity cost. It’s sort of the same thing in different wrapping. For example, if you choose to spend all your money on bubblegum, you don’t have the opportunity to invest money in other things, because you’ve already made the choice about bubblegum. There’s an opportunity cost— other lost opportunities— every time you make a choice. If you choose to live dishonestly, you’ve given up being trusted. If you manage your teenage years irresponsibly and end up with some kind of run-in with the law, you may have given up some of the career choices in law enforcement or the judicial system or high security jobs in technology or international affairs.

Mrs. McGill wanted The Dad to realize that while I didn’t see the value of finishing high school, I actually would close doors that I hadn’t gotten to yet! If you make the decision not to finish high school in the most direct path, you haven’t gotten to the door of college—you’ve given up the key, at least for some time. You can’t open that door!

Mrs. McGill was really trying to say that The Dad needed to think about whether the decision he was making was a single decision (nothing ever is) or would lead to a series of decisions deciding other ones down the road. Some choices severely limit your options at the next decision point.

There are all kinds of decisions that bring you to the next decision point. What you don’t want to do is get to a Y in the road and realize that something you did in the past has foreclosed one of those paths. In the case of higher education, you can choose to go or not, unless you didn’t finish high school.

The Dad has thought often about Mrs. McGill. Mrs. McGIll and The Dad’s parents teamed up to get The Dad on track. So, after that, The Dad was allowed to go out only two nights a week. One was a date night and The Dad had to be home by 11, and the other was church night and The Dad had to be home by 10. The Dad’s parents were engaged, but they waited a little long. I don’t remember them blaming the education system or my teachers: there was a presumption when things went wrong with my education that I was the guilty party. And that was probably right. But The Dad knew in a conflict between myself and a teacher that my parents would traitorously (correctly) side with the teachers, or in this case, the counselor. And in these days you didn’t get to go see your counselor unless there was a problem on your end. But she was able to use the right words and make an impression.

Not only did Mrs. McGill’s perspective get The Dad over the speed bump of not understanding the value of school at that stage, but it was something that has been a repetitive theme in The Dad’s adulthood, this idea of trying to understand whether one choice will limit another choice further down the road. It takes more work, but you become more thoughtful about choices. There have been a whole basket of regrets that The Dad has avoided all because Mrs. McGill was trying to figure out how to get him through high school in less than five years.

And remember, even if you decide after the fact that those four years were a waste and The Dad was wrong, or you never get a teacher as wise as Mrs. McGill, even if you do drop out and end up taking a different route in life, they can't eat you!