The reason I quit – high school (truth), wasn’t because I didn’t love learning – I’m an avid insatiable student (and teacher for g’ness sake!). But – I didn’t (and still don’t) like the way most schools teach. Most institutions use what I call “linear learning” – reading a book and taking a test at the end of the chapter – aka: memorization. I learn by demonstration, engagement, and a passionate teacher who parlays wisdom and thinks outside the box – not from a textbook written a cazillion years ago. Honestly, it was insulting to my hunger for real knowledge to sit in a classroom and be passed on theory that had become outdated by the time that dusty book hit my desk. I wanted a higher level of learning, like a live feedback loop of theory and experience, research, trial and error – the kind of committed learning environment that very few teachers manage to pull off in public school.

Maybe it was because I was lucky enough to have two amazing, forward-thinking teachers in Jr. High. My art teacher Mr. Justad and my English teacher Ms. Tyson. They were visionary, passionate teachers and they believed in me. They saw my hunger, my raw talent and they nurtured it. When I arrived at high school I never found them again in any teacher. No one cared – and neither did I. I couldn’t find inspiration or knowledge in any classroom and it was a bummer because I so wanted to learn.

And I didn’t leave because I wasn’t driven – obviously I’m very much so.

And it wasn’t because I wasn’t smart – most times I knew more than the teacher.

It was something else.

Firstly, I had been living on my own sharing an apartment with a friend of mine since I was 15. Yep – I know, hard to believe even for me now, but that’s a whole ‘nother part of the story…

And secondly, I had this weird kind of premonition of the life in front of me. It was like being in church when the preacher was in a moment of epiphany and the angels in the choir were singing their exaltation at full tilt. It was as loud a message as I’d ever heard:

“You’re not going to need this for your life. You’re going to be just fine – follow your intuition.”

What??? At first I thought I’d just gone bat crazy because crazy is what they all would call me. It was my senior year in high school and I was walking away NOW? But something in me couldn’t contain myself – I was like a wild mare stomping my hooves snorting at the gate in the pen, dying to run free.

I was 16 (I was a grade ahead). I marched myself into the principals office (shaking in my shoes) and told him I wanted to leave, that there was nothing here for me. I don’t even remember what he said, something about being sure I was making the right decision (nothing encouraging for me to stay whatsoever) and that was that. I unlatched the gate, set myself free, galloped across the great lawn and never looked back.

We later found out that my high school had been in a slump in regard to teachers and an “in between” period of their teaching materials. No kidding.

It took some large size guts for me to leave, but it wasn’t even something I had control over – it seized me, devoured me up and spit me back out. No more school, no more rules. I would figure it on my own.

[And just a note here – I’m not recommending this to anyone else. It is not for the weak of spirit or for those who are not built for a kind of guts and glory carving-their-own-path kind of spirit.]

I always knew that I was different from most kids. I knew early on that I never wanted to follow a “mold.” I preferred the “unconventional” path riddled with questions and odd hard won wisdom and rebellion. My heroes were the renegades, the inventors, the saints and all the renaissance men and women. People that carved the future, not followed the pack. Joan of Arc, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King. And keep in mind this was a time when the counter-culture was exploding in full bloom – right smack during the mid-seventies when youth everywhere were breaking stereotypes and breaking the rules to be free.

But it wasn’t smooth sailing, matter of fact there were massive bumps and detours on the road and I’ll tell that one day in my memoirs. Yet it was an incredibly provocative, never-a-dull-moment path and I learned more about life earlier than most from being out in the world on my own at such a young age. And I came further faster as I carved my way, and seized opportunities that to others were bodacious and ambitious.

I wanted a bold life – and I got it.

Why am I telling you all of this? To tell you that you can’t get to where you want to go – to this place of greatness where the world falls at your feet by following what’s been done before. You’re going to have to risk going where your intuition leads and carve a trail. Anyone great – the artists you admire, BROKE the mold. They followed some irrational unreasonable aim and went off into the great unknown to find it. That’s where you will go to find your guts, your glory, your vision, your gifts, and a message that you can then bring back to the world. Don’t hold back. Where is your intuition urging you to go?

Answer the call.

P.S. And by the way, here are some of the notables that also decided to fend for themselves and leave high school: Richard Branson, Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Robert De Niro, Pierce Brosnan, Ray Charles…

Other notables who left college include: Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Maya Angelou, Lady Gaga, Norah Jones, Ellen DeGeneres.

Interesting…

PPS – if you haven’t watched this – do it NOW – it’s only up for another week or so!! And – it’s only 2:38 minutes ;). Learn how to Go from Good to Great here.

©2013 Cari Cole, Vocal Mag, Inc. All Rights Reserved.