PE is not the way to get a healthy body. It rarely promotes confidence in sports and does more harm than good in that regard. If you want a healthy body, go to the gym, get in a karate class, or take up jogging. Your bodies health is very important, but PE is a poor path to a healthy anything.

Personally I found high school a complete waste of time. But maybe that's just me. Most teacher's don't know what they are even teaching. They merely throw a book at you and make you go through it. They use answer sheets and teacher's guides to show them the answers that they obviously don't know. Every now and then you will have a teacher who is passionate for what they teach, and knows a lot about it. Don't take these people for granted.

Other than that... I would say that if you are merely worried about getting into a school... maybe you should try to obtain your GED. It's the equivalent of a high school diploma, and there is nothing stopping you from trying to get one now. I'll tell you right now that I never graduated high school. It wasn't because I was cutting class or failing, and not because I just didn't want to do it. It was because of a flawed system and total idiots running the school and teaching the courses. (among other things that I don't care to discuss) I ended up getting my GED in my junior year and I passed it with flying colors.

I can honestly tell you that degrees and diplomas mean absolutely nothing to 99% of the game/tv/movie industry. You are either skilled and have experience, or you aren't. Your potential employer isn't going to look at your resume and say "hmmm he has solid artistic skills, a good knowledge of the game development process... but he got a D in his 10th grade French class.. oh well, so close!" The bottom line is, they don't care.

If you're applying for an artistic position, your portfolio and reel are 75% of what gets you hired. The other 25% is experience and how you present yourself. Very rarely is anyone going to ask to see your diploma/degree/certification, if ever. What is more important is to gain knowledge in the field you want to work in. It's always good to learn new things and gain more knowledge in things that aren't directly related to your career. It helps to make you a more diverse employee with potential to bring new ideas to the company.

However I can't agree with everyone who says that completing high school is important or vital to your career. The reason that completing high school is encouraged for most people is that these people are not very talented or don't really succeed in any one field. They NEED to finish high school in order to pursue college and possibly find SOMETHING they can do for a living. They need that piece of paper that says "look I'm smart, I promise!" because they aren't able to do so otherwise.

You need to be able to step back and take a look at yourself. Do you see yourself as well educated? Can you read and write well? (tiyping leik thiz iz nott gunnaa get u far) The most important time for learning is when you are young. (elementary and middle school) That is when you learn what you need to learn that will help you through the rest of your life. Knowing all of the presidents, all of the elements on the periodic table, how to say "the car is brown" in Spanish or how many licks it takes to get to the center of a lollipop, are not going to get you very far in a videogame career.

Unless the game you're making happens to be about all 50 presidents who are in Mexico, riding around in a brown car, collecting all of the elements of the periodic table so that they can determine the amount of licks it takes to get to the center of a lollipop. Then you're screwed.

On some level I agree Konidias, but it is still important to recognize that even taken with that mind set, formal schooling, especially university (which takes a diploma or GED to get into) is a very good place to gain mind broadening knowledge. It is rather obvious that the OP has little trouble learning things he is interested in and should at this point be well on his way to having a professional level of knowledge in the fields he wishes to work in. On the other hand, that diverse range of understanding that keeps you from being labeled a geek because all you know is code is still very important.

In the face of broad worldly knowledge, confidence, and good communication skills, only incompetence at your given task will get you fired. On the other hand it takes mastery of a technical skill to get you promoted over some one who doesn't seem to be a block head when non-technical subjects are spoken of.

Bottom line here is this: You can opt out of high school if you take the GED, that's fine, especially if you take it before your senior year and if you get good marks on it. That looks good to university, and you never have to worry about the transcript from the high school. The OP should probably look into this. On the other hand, University is still important for gaining broad knowledge of subjects you are not familiar with. It can be self taught, but that takes discipline, and maybe even passion. I don't much think the OP is going to learn about a lot of things that way yet, so university is the best bet. Trouble is though, university offers a lot of freedom, so the behaviors the OP is exhibiting now are only likely to get worse unless he takes major action to correct them. The time for that is now, and considering that no matter how bad you do in high school you get a GED do-over, you might as well take high school as a place to teach yourself some discipline while you can survive your mistakes.

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Original post by Konidias Personally I found high school a complete waste of time. But maybe that's just me. Most teacher's don't know what they are even teaching. They merely throw a book at you and make you go through it. They use answer sheets and teacher's guides to show them the answers that they obviously don't know. Every now and then you will have a teacher who is passionate for what they teach, and knows a lot about it. Don't take these people for granted.

I completely agree that high school education is overall absolutely horrible in the United States (I can't comment about secondary education elsewhere as I'm not familiar with it).

This is another reason why I recommend you try your hardest to see if you can take college classes while in high school. By "college class" I mean a class physically at a community college or possibly even a four-year school. For one, college classes are usually much better than high school classes. The teachers aren't necessarily better (although they usually are), but the fact that the material is compressed to a semester means it's harder for the teachers to waste your time. The faster pace should help you focus more as well. Homework tends to be more worthwhile because you'll have fewer assignments on the same topic, and falling behind on homework has more dire consequences with a faster pace, which is ample motivation for most to just buckle down and do it.

The funny thing is that colleges have a lot of classes on material that should be in high school. For example, "college algebra" is offered by colleges and most high schools. The difference is it will probably take a whole year at a high school and just a semester at a college. If you're good at math, I'd really recommend trying to take college algebra and calculus I and possibly calculus II at a nearby college rather than at a high school. Alternatively, you could just take AP Calculus AB and BC if your school offers it. In my opinion, AP Calculus is a rather weak treatment of the subject, but that's neither here nor there. [smile]

The best way to get ahead is to show that you're smart, dedicated, hard-working, and that you enjoy learning. Remember that in the world of software development one must constantly be learning new technologies. If you don't like learning, you'll fail in the world of software development.

To inspire you, I know of one person who went to my current school and who took AP Physics B and AP Calculus AB and BC at his high school. Meanwhile, he took general chemistry I and II at his local community college, as well as three programming courses, a composition class, a history class, and a public speaking class. He spread this out over two years (including some summer courses) and mixed it in with high school.

Three (not four) years later he graduated with degrees in computer science and mathematics, and he's now working on a graduate degree in computer science at Stanford. [Of course, the high school preparation was not sufficient to get him into Stanford. He did some pretty impressive research in AI as an undergraduate. But he was able to focus on such research because he pushed himself very hard in high school and got ahead of everyone else.]

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Original post by Spire Games I have been diagnosed with ADHD and I am currently taking medications for it, but they don't seem to be helping my situation, so I don't know if that's the real problem.

It's not. And whatever you do, don't use it as an excuse. You are physically and mentally capable of getting an A in every class. I just want to make sure you don't ever use it as an excuse to say "Oh, I can't do my homework, my ADHD is kicking in pretty bad right now and I can't do it." It might force you to work a little harder or a little longer, but you always have the ability to get done what you need to get done. I hope you don't feel like I'm coming down on you or that I'm not taking the fact that you have ADHD seriously, but the truth is that ADHD is only going to be holding you back in life if you start using it as an excuse for things. You can still do everything, even if it might be harder to sit down and focus.

Aside from that, all I can suggest is getting some good headphones and blasting your favorite music through them as you do your homework. The headphones part is important though. For some reason I could focus a lot better listening through headphones than I could listening to my stereo or computer speakers. But use whatever works for you.

My opinion on this is that it isnt necessarily the pupils but the manner in which they are taught.

I hated most lessons in school, history was dull/boring, had no relevance or reason why I was supposed to be learning it. You learned that lots of wars happened bombs went of and it was very bad.

Maths all that involved was learning multiplication by rote(that stupid table) and sitting doing problems from books. I hated it.

French was just repette(une, deux, twois,) or whatever was the stock phrases that week.

Recently I've got into history, reading books from the library and its been fascinating. Perhaps because the person telling it enjoyed doing so and that came across.

I've also because of an attempt to program tried learning some maths/algebra. I realised it was a quite interesting and even enjoyable when coupled with programming. It was like I was lied to. Maths isnt about doing boring equations from a workbook. Its about quantifying and solving problems in the world.

In fact I'm really annoyed at my teachers most of whom werent really interested in teaching, just in doling out a curriculum.

If the teachers are bored with teaching how could you not, expect the pupils to be?

I can't disagree that the US public school system isn't very good, although I can't speak from experience since I was home/private schooled (and consequently, received a "high school" education with greater depth than most Bachelor's degrees in Computer Science).

Anyway, even though you may feel you're learning useless and poorly taught subjects, consider continuing anyway, doing all the extra work you can find. For example as others have mentioned, take AP classes, college courses, everything you can find. I've found that while employers/universities should care more about your accomplishments than your education, unfortunately they often won't even look at your accomplishments if you don't meet their education requirements. It's kind of like they feel the need for external validation to feel safe in choosing you.

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Original post by sunandshadow Can't tell you how many nonsense game designs I have seen where the designer clearly knew nothing about mitochondria or DNA or radiation or viruses or nanobots or whatever piece of nanotech he picked to be the evil plague or magic mark of the chosen one in his game design. Even when it's just a stupid little thing like wrongly putting a belly button on a dinosaur, it's still Did Not Do The Research.

So what? It's a game. Or a silly mass market TV show. You may object, it may not meet your intellectual needs. But does it meet a lot of people's needs? Does it make money? Most people don't care about these details. Simulation and historical research are traps. Don't confuse your personal passion for them with game design. It's fine to make games that you personally want to make, if that's your artistic statement, but it doesn't mean that games require accuracy.

In other words, yes it's valid for someone to regard Biology classes as useless and de-focusing. You do not have to make your game appease all possible people out there. You do not have to respond to everyone's perceived objections about why your game is "wrong." You do not have to study a broad range of academic subjects for years in order to get it "right." What you have to do, is ship a product that people will play.

Like most people I assume, I wasn't always interested in my classes. What worked best for me, was to take topics from the class, and turn them into games.

For example, in middle school social studies, I created Henry Ford Assembly Line and Red Baron Flight games, both in RPGMaker. They were nothing special, maybe 5 minute games just to explain the topic. It forced me to read the text books, and research online to make my game accurate, I even got extra credit for bringing the games to school. =)

Theres no way out of the subjects that don't interest you, but you can always find ways to tweak the subjects into something that does.

Good luck.

There is a theory that ADHD may have had evolutionary advantages in hunter gatherer societies. And that subsequently, as the vast majority of humanity became agrarian, and later industrial, that the priorities of civilization have crushed the life out of such people. That is to say, you're expected to spend hours and hours maintaining a rice paddy, doing tedious stuff over and over again, and you're supposed to like it.

This is also offered as a partial explanation for the stereotype of Asians being good at math: they have a culture of continuous farming output, working hard at stuff forever. Rice fields get more fertile the harder you work them, they're odd that way. Whereas Western societies raised wheat, which uses up all the fertilizer. Fields must lie fallow for a time, and wheat has to be harvested seasonally. Consequently, Westerners do nothing in summers and winters. They simply don't put as many hours into work as Asians do. That's why Asians are better at math, they work harder at it, as a culture. This idea was developed in the book "Outliers: The Story Of Success" by Malcolm Gladwell.

Yadda yadda try not to flunk those courses. You'll be better off in "standard" society if you don't. However: if you end up flunking them, realize that your life is not over. You are not doomed to fast food servitude and so forth. You will simply have to go find yourself as a hunter-gatherer. This will probably mean taking weird jobs that most people don't take. Outdoor jobs? Travel jobs? Who knows.

I survived the dot.com bust by plying the strange trade of signature gathering. I stood in front of Wal-Marts getting people to sign ballot initiatives. It had some advantages: I was working outdoors, not at a desk. I did not have a boss staring over my shoulder telling me what to do. It was a strictly sink-or-swim industry, based on my own performance. It had to do with politics, which I find interesting.

On the downside, it's a form of sales and I'm not a salesman. You have to be the 1st person to a given Wal-Mart or you're not going to make the big bucks. There's only so much virgin Wal-Mart to go around, there's not enough for everyone in the industry to make big money like that. I didn't have the discipline or desire to get up at the crack of dawn and so forth. I don't care to do it anymore, as I can make soooooo much more money as a programmer, and really it was tedious repetitive work not worthy of my huge brain cells.

But, I do not regret being exposed to a completely different aspect of life, apart from how "standard" society works. One of the more amusing adventures was going down to Los Angeles with a ex-felon junkie Hells Angel. He shoplifted, had a bad heart, and ate a lot of unhealthy fast food. He's probably dead now. Not long after I met him, he got stabbed in a motel parking lot. But he says he shot the guy... who knows what happened. He was a pro at signature gathering, he made a lot of money, and he taught me a few things. We chased the big riches in LA, but he made very little money and I made zilch. We broke the partnership because we had too much friction about how to do things. But I have stories to tell now. I can laugh about them, now that I'm not suffering financially from them anymore.

People make TV shows about this kind of stuff. Don't be afraid of what people expect out of you. It's your life and you will live it.