[ktownsend]

I can empathize with the gut reaction, and the title is clickbait-y, but the article does elaborate that it's not the same tired trope of privileged kid drops out of Stanford/MIT/Harvard to become startup billionaire:

> he dropped out of high school to become a poet. It would take a chance encounter during his university years — and many moments of feeling lost — for him to find that mathematics held what he’d been looking for all along.

Having taken a similar path myself -- I dropped out of high school due to a combination of factors, but was still able to get into university 6 months later -- I can empathize with mandatory education NOT being something people fit into, and where making the right career choice isn't always clear or easy.

Not everyone who 'dropped out' did it because of unlimited mom-and-dad-money and boundless professional and social opportunities, nor wears it like a badge of honor.

I get tired of the trope and survivorship bias as well, but in this case it seems like the author did still put in the hard work of learning his niche the traditional way, if in a round-about manner: through a lot of hours of study, personal investment, natural curiosity, and using the abilities he has to the best of his abilities.

[tester756]

>but was still able to get into university 6 months later

How does that even work?

[astrange]

Some countries' systems rely on entrance exams, not your high school transcripts. I've seen it claimed it's common to drop out of high school in Korea to focus on the exams, though I don't really understand the details.