Re:Why it's expensive to be poor
by noonespecial on Wednesday May 20, 2009 @11:45PM
(#619844)
When I was 14, I thought that sex in a pool was a contraceptive method because "the chlorine would kill the sperm".
14 year olds can be monumentally ignorant about very important things. How many geometry tests do you have to skip before its one too many?
Re:Why it's expensive to be poor
by nostrademons on Thursday May 21, 2009 @02:15AM
(#619980)
I know a bunch of people that dropped out of high school (usually later, at 16 or 17, since you can't at 14 in MA) and several of them have done quite well for themselves. As in gotten into Smith, MIT, or Wellesley. Many of the better colleges don't care about that high school diploma if you can demonstrate that you can do college-level work.
My list of "things that will really wreck your life" includes:
1) Getting killed.
2) Getting addicted.
3) Getting pregnant.
4) Getting convicted.
In roughly that order of precedence. Also, many of my friends that actually did have babies as teenagers wouldn't actually say it "wrecked their life" - rather, it just meant that their expectations for what their life would hold became dramatically different than what they initially expected.
Not even necessarily #2, our valevictorian in high school went to Harvard - and at age 14 was arrested, convicted, and went to juvie for a few days for shop lifting. You have to commit a violent crime to really screw up your life because everything else gets erased.
Let's not mumble-mumble "choices" -- that makes it sound like you could be doomed forever if, in a fit of adolescent stupidity, you went out with friends instead of studying for a geometry test.
Here are the durable wreck-your-life decisions you can make at age 14:
1) Dropping out of high school, at age 14.
2) Getting thrown in jail for crimes you committed, at age 14.
3) Getting pregnant, at age 14.
They don't seem all that hard to avoid now, do they? And they don't look all that hidden now, do they? Its not like rich people get together and say "Psssst, pssst: having a baby at age 14 will wreck your life. Pass it on but don't tell the poor people!"