onethousandknives wrote:Hi, sometime in high school was when I first saw Winston's website as well. I didn't have power to change a lot of my situation in high school, though, but as I got into my 20s I had more power to do so, and did.
So if you're 14 now, it's not too likely you'll be going abroad soon, but you have to build the foundation now so you can escape, as I'm in the situation of not having a big foundation built from spending my high school years in nihilism due to everything around me.
Basically, English teaching is one of the most in demand jobs abroad, opportunities are less than years ago, but it's still one of the better options for employment abroad. English teaching needs usually at least an associates degree. So here's what I would recommend to do to get a really big head start so you can really hit the ground running at 18-20 years old. You said you don't like high school, but there is a potential way out of it. The GED test. The GED test isn't very hard, it's about 8th grade level, and for math maxes out at prealgebra, and has an essay, etc. It's not ridiculously hard. If you go to the store or even a library, pick up a GED test prep book and take the practice tests. Keep practicing until you get good scores. In my state, the actual GED was easier than the practice tests. The problem you have for the GED is most state high school drop out laws are a lot stricter nowadays. You can't legally drop out of high school in some states until 18 years old. But the GED generally needs to be taken after dropping out of high school, sometimes for X number of months. So, this might not work depending on your state and your parent's views, but if you can drop out and take the GED, you're out. I graduated a year ahead of my class in high school due to taking a GED like this, when in high school I was "scheduled" to be on the "super senior" (5 year) track. It's a very different track, but if you take the initiative and study hard and start getting really good scores on the practice tests, polish up your grammar/etc for the essay, I think it's pretty conceivable for a person of average intelligence to pass it with 6 months of studying. But unlike high school, if you work harder, you do get more results, in this case a diploma and leaving high school. So if high school is very problematic for you, and you can convince your parents of this option, do it!
An optional thing is taking the SAT, study hard for that, and just keep the score on record. It's not NEEDED for community college, but it's probably better to have a good SAT score than not for future college opportunities.
But after your GED is taken, you're eligible to go to community college. Also, I think even without taking the GED, you're eligible for CLEP and DSST tests, which are able to be used at lots of schools for college credit, and you can take these tests while still in high school. They're $80 a piece plus admin costs ($50 where I live for the testing center...) Take a look at College Board's website and see what tests are worth whatever number of credits. Generally 60 credits are needed for an associate's degree. So if you can accumulate 60 credits (most tests are 3 credits a piece) and then transfer them to a correspondence school like Thomas Edison College, maybe take a few online classes, you have a degree relatively instantly. But even many state colleges will take the CLEP tests and give you credits for them, so if you wish to go to a state college and get a degree from there, you can do it.
Then after you get your associates (or Bachelors,) you can get a TEFL (Teach English as a Foreign Language) certificate and be able to teach English in another country and meet most countries requirements for English teachers. So since you're 14 now, you can have a head start on this, instead of starting at 18-19, or later (like me) you can start now and be ready to go. And worst case scenario if you decide to change life paths or whatever, hey, you got a college degree at 18. So nothing's lost by doing this.
I only say all this as this is what I wish I could have done at your age. The problem at 14 is your life is still mostly in other people's hands. So your job would be convincing them to help you in your endeavours. Which.... is hard. But even if you cannot convince people to help you in this way, ie, getting ahead in school and college early, try the best you can to remember that what you're going through is temporary. It's all an illusion, every bit of what you see in your teenage world. It's not real. It will come to pass. So like a prisoner, while you're in prison, you can either try the best you can to do constructive things with your time, do nothing at all, or worse, get involved in the internal affairs of the prison, get in petty fights, gangs, etc, apply this to high school and do you get it? So now, you got 4 years to use. You have limited agency in those 4 years, but you do have 4 years until your high school sentence is up. So use those 4 years in as positive a manner as possible.
Besides the formal educational opportunities through testing, what I suggest is, learn to do as much stuff as possible. Learn to cook, learn to work on bikes, cars, anything. Learn, learn, learn. Build things. Even building something simple like a bird house or model kit or whatever is enough to satisfy the mind and make you happier. Also, you're in the prime years of your life for doing athletic things. High school is all about team sports, obviously. But if you're not a "team player" there's a lot of individual athletic sports you can do. Fencing, gymnastics, ice skating, ballroom dance, martial arts, weightlifting. Even if you just go for a walk or ride your bike on a daily (or almost daily basis) you're much better off doing that than spending the time alone on the computer or video games excessively. But building up a good athletic body and physique will help you a lot, so try to do something during these years, as your current years you can make some of the biggest amounts of progress in a sport and it's much harder to make that later in life. Besides athletic things, try to have a good diet, too. This is super hard at your age, as your parents (or in my case, single parent after divorce) buy your food, so if you're stuck with frozen pizza and spaghetti-os, this will vastly negatively affect your physical and mental state. But eventually, any small amounts of money I got from my mother, I'd actually walk to a grocery store and buy and learn to cook food. So if you can learn to cook now if your parents don't, ask them say, for $10-20 a week for your own food you cook yourself, you'll be a lot better off, too.
And yeah, if you do plan to go abroad, do try to learn the language of the place you're going now. It's much easier to learn languages now compared to when I was your age almost 10 years ago, so many more internet resources and programs exist now, also again, you're younger, so it's in general easier to learn things.
Anyway, I wish you luck and will pray for you. Sorry for a long lecture, just whatever you do, don't give up hope. Eventually you'll get your own agency and be able to make your own decisions. Don't become nihilistic, and don't try to conform with this culture, or subculture of it, as I did at your age, just remember your situation is only temporary, with high school and the craziness involved in it. So even if you have the power to change nothing at all, don't give up hope in that regard. It will end eventually, then you can follow your dreams and get out (hopefully, unless passports get revoked or something crazy like that happens.) Just for now try to use your time in the most positive manner possible and just remember it will eventually end.
