SPEAK
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NOT JUST A TEENAGE DIRTBAG
How dropping out of high school was one of the best decisions I ever made // BETH BEAVERS
Too cool for school. Beth is pictured here (third from left) at her sophomore homecoming dance in 2002. She dropped out her junior year. Beth went on to receive her GED and attend KU. Even though she missed out on traditional high school memories, Beth says she's happy with the decision she made.
still remember the phone ringing. It was always around the same time, right after the second class of the day had begun. It was always the same secretary, and she always said the same thing when the answering machine picked up.
"I was just calling to let you know Elizabeth Beavers was absent from class this morning."
She must have known the Beavers' home phone number by heart.
I was still living in bed in the pitch dark of my basement bedroom. My parents had left for work hours ago, and they didn't know I was still at home and not in school.
I could have gotten up to go, but I usually didn't. I would let the feeling of disappointment in myself for missing the first class take over and I would shut down. I wouldn't leave the house, or sometimes my bed, for the rest of the day.
It wasn't that I didn't enjoy school. I didn't struggle any more than normal with the course work. I didn't drink or do drugs. I had friends and was involved with different groups. I even was in the top five percent of my 350-person class for a while. My family supported me and everything I wanted to achieve. But I was sad and depressed; the death of my grandfather a few years earlier combined with teenage angst left me lacking the will to get up most days.
All of the class-skipping caught up to me by junior year. My parents were getting called at work. Our relationship became more and more strained: we spoke less and I spent more time alone in my room. My grades slipped. I found, when you do decide to come in late, you can only sneak in through the janitor's door so many times before getting caught. By December, the frequency of my visits to the vice principal's office had increased dramatically.
After a meeting with my parents, school counselor, vice principal and concerned teachers, I vowed to go back and give it my all until graduation. Then one of my best friends told me a teacher compared me to my older, more successful and mature brother in front of a class, "Beth? Oh, she's nothing like her brother." After that, I couldn't go back.
The next day, another phone call from the secretary prompted my mom to come home early from work.
"Is that it?"
All I could do was nod. I was done with high school.
The next few days were rough, fielding phone calls and emails from friends and former teachers. My dad barely spoke to me. Even my favorite elementary school teacher, Miss VanHook, called me to see if the rumors from the teachers' lounge about me dropping out were true.
After a few weeks my parents accepted I wasn't going back. Always loving and forgiving, they allowed me to continue living under their roof on the condition that I take the next offered GED test and get a job. My mom helped a lot, driving me around the city so I could make the necessary arrangements to take the test as quickly as possible, paying the testing fees and offering much needed moral support. Showing the initiative to get my GED strengthened my strained relationship with my parents.
I took the seven-hour test during two days in a cramped room at a community college that was an hour away from my house. There were people of all ages taking the test. For some, it was their first time. Others had taken it before and been unsuccessful, some multiple times. According to the GED Testing Service, only 60 percent of high school seniors pass the test on their first attempt.
I passed on my first try. I had my GED by that April, a full year before I would have graduated from high school.
I missed out on a lot in that year, which was
something I hadn't considered when I dropped out. I didn't get to participate in any of the silly senior rituals. I didn't go to my senior prom. I've never worn a cap and gown and I didn't get to walk across the stage at graduation. No one ever asked me where I would be attending college. And even though I went to school with a lot of my classmates for more than a decade, I was not invited to the class of 2005's five-year reunion.
Instead of partaking in the traditions, I spent that year regaining my parents' trust. I desperately wanted to come to KU, but a four-year, out-of-state university is a large investment in a girl who couldn't even finish high school. So I took classes at a local community college and worked a part-time job for a year before transferring. I didn't go out much. You find out who your true friends are when you drop out of high school. I found an anti-depressant that helped and a therapist I connected with. With her help I adjusted from an anxious, angry high school drop-out to a functioning young adult.
tell them I'm a drop-out, because they say I don't seem like the type of person who would quit high school. A 2009 study from Northeastern University found that drop-outs are more likely to be unemployed. 63 times more likely to have been institutionalized, four times as likely to come from a family that was below the poverty line and female drop-outs were six times as likely to have had children before the age of 24. I fit none of those stereotypes, but I am a high school drop out, just like 6.2 million other 16 to 24-year-olds in the U.S.
People are usually taken by surprise when I
Though I missed a lot of things in that year of high school, I wouldn't change my decision. I wouldn't have been happy had I stayed. I had the opportunity to volunteer and learn about myself Most importantly, I'm happy where I've ended up And even though my attendance record is far from perfect, on May 16, I'll finally get to put on a cap and gown and walk down the hill. JP
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