You did it right, with deep engagement. I dropped out of high school to secretly enroll in college. I felt high school was a waste of time, plus my home state is overly Christian and I'm not. I did not care about a degree, I wanted an Education. As soon as I could, I went to Boston and just started taking classes anywhere I wanted with any class of interest. I started with Harvard Summer School and continued with Boston University and MIT for a period of 5 years. I got to participate in the early 3D graphics research community, was a part of DeVanney & Mandelbrot's team that wrote Beauty of Fractals, participated in the AI research of the time, wrote my own 3D animation language, and finally graduated B.U. one semester shy of 4 more undergraduate degrees. I just did what interested me until I was forced to graduate.