When I was fourteen, I took my first two classes at the local community college. As I've gotten older and met more people I've seen that this isn't very unusual. I'm not sure if it's because I just know lots of smart people or if it really is that common to start college and high school at the same time, although I imagine that it's the latter. Regardless, though, at fourteen I was most certainly the only other person I knew that was voluntarily going to school during the summers.
I thought it was great. In my other life, my high school life, I was taking English, Math, and History. In college I could take things called Ancient Greek History, Western Civilizations, and Philosophy. They rolled off the tongue better, they tasted better, and they made me sound older and more sophisticated. My high school friends were going to football games and the mall while my college friends were hanging out at coffee houses, playing the guitar, and growing facial hair.
Since I had long before mastered having a double life during my previous brief experiments with drugs and straight-A's, I decided I could handle college and high school without trouble. And I did, too. It felt like cheating, like I was getting the good stuff after the torture of high school beforehand. But then I graduated from high school and went to a real college full time, and found that my special, superior feeling was gone. I was just another one of the sheep.
So I did what any one would have done: I accelerated my degree and got the heck out of school. And so I have landed here in Seattle with no more school and a terrible job, and I think that it's possible I just did everything backwards, or at least sideways.
Life's funny, and it's much, much smarter than me. So it's a good thing it's in charge. Somewhere, things are going to work out just fine.
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