Famous, Successful Drop-Outs

[monkeefugg]

For anyone anxious about the prospect of rejection:

Not getting into Academia is not necessarily the end of the world; on the contrary, it can be the very opposite--the perfect chance to get out in the 'real world' and do stuff!

Here is a short-list I have compiled (cherry picked form a much longer list) of awesome people who dropped out of high school or college. (I have starred the best ones.) What's more--it's alphabetized! :

Ansel Adams, photographer. Dropped out of high school.

***Woody Allen, screenwriter, actor, director, and producer. Was thrown out of New York University after one semester for poor grades. Also dropped out of City College of New York. As he admitted, “I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics final. I looked within the soul of the boy sitting next to me.”

Julie Andrews, Oscar-winning actress, singer, author. Dropped out of high school.

Lucille Ball, actress, comedienne, producer. Co-founder of Desilu Studios. Late bought out her husband's share to become the first woman to own and run a production studio. Dropped out of high school.

Irving Berlin, Oscar-winning songwriter, composer. When his father died when he was 8 years old, he had to work to survive. Wrote such long-lasting hits as God Bless America, White Christmas, There's No Business Like Show Business, etc.

***Carl Bernstein, Watergate reporter, Washington Post. Never finished college. Started as a copy boy at the Washington Star at the age of 16.

William Blake, poet, artist. Never attended school, educated at home by his mother.

Peter Bogdanovich, director, screenwriter, actor, author. High school dropout. Began studying acting with Stella Adler when he was only 16.

***Ray Bradbury, science fiction author. Never went to college. “I never went to college. I went to the library.”

***George Carlin, comedian, author 4-time Grammy winner. Never finished high school. As he noted, “The fact that I didn't finish school left me with a lifelong need to prove that I'm smart.” He also noted, “When you're a dropout and the culture accepts you and begins to quote you and teach your stuff in class and textbooks, this is my honorary baccalaureate.”

Winston Churchill, British prime minister, historian, artist. Rebellious by nature, he generally did poorly in school. Flunked sixth grade. After he left Harrow, he applied to the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, but it took him three times before he passed the entrance exam. He graduated 8th out of a class of 150 a year and a half later. He never attended college.

Leonardo DiCaprio, actor. At the age of 14, he signed with an agent and began doing commercial work as well as acting. He complete high school with a tutor, but put off college. As he has noted, "Life is my college now." *(GREAT QUOTE!)*

Charles Dickens, bestselling novelist. Elementary school dropout.

***David Duchovny, dreamboat alien-hunter, Duchovny earned an undergraduate degree from Princeton University and also earned a graduate degree in English Literature at Yale University. While at Yale, he began commuting to New York to study acting and was soon appearing in off-Broadway plays. In 1987 he abandoned his doctoral studies at Yale to pursue acting full time.

William Faulkner, Nobel and Pulitzer prize-winning novelist. Dropped out of high school after his second year. Also later attended but dropped out of the University of Mississippi.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, novelist. Dropped out of Princeton University.

***Benjamin Franklin, inventor, scientist, inventor, diplomat, author, printer, publisher, politician, patriot, signer of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Home schooled with less than two years of formal education.

Barry Goldwater, U.S. senator and presidential candidate. He dropped out of the University of Arizona after one year to take over the family department store.

Kelsey Grammar, actor. Attended Juilliard for two years but was kicked out for poor attendance. Went on to acting success in Cheers, Frasier, and Back to You television shows.

***Cary Grant, Oscar-winning actor. High school dropout.

William Randolph Hearst, newspaper publisher and movie producer, was thrown out of Harvard for poor grades (apparently due to heavy partying).

Patrick Henry, Virginia governor, revolutionary patriot. Home schooled. Later studied on his own and became a lawyer.

Andrew Jackson, U.S. president, general, attorney, judge, congressman. Orphaned at 14. Home schooled. By the age of 35 without formal education, he became a practicing attorney.

***Peter Jennings, news anchor, ABC's World News Tonight. Failed the 10th grade. Left high school at 16 to work as a bank teller. He later attributed his failure in high school to boredom and laziness.

John F. Kennedy, U.S. president. He dropped out of Princeton University in 1935 but eventually graduated cum laude from Harvard University in 1940.

***B.B. King, blues musician, songwriter, and legend. Never finished high school. “I have two laptops. I didn't finish high school, so one is my tutor: I buy software on things I don't know. I write music with the other.” (People magazine)

***George Orwell (aka Eric Blair), author of Animal Farm and 1984. Instead of attending university after graduating from Eton, he joined the Imperial Police and worked in Burma. When he returned, he worked in restaurant kitchens, slept in homeless shelters, and eventually documented the condition of miners. All the time, he was writing reviews, essays, novels, and a regular newspaper column. His Animal Farm has sold more than 10 million copies.

Sydney Pollack, movie director, producer, and actor. Skipped college and enrolled at the Neighborhood Playhouse, where he studied under drama coach Sanford Meisner.

Theodore Roosevelt, U.S. president. Attended school only for a few months. Was tutored at home.

Carl Sandburg, poet, historian, Pulitzer Prize winner. Had little formal education but later attended Lombard College and graduated.

Leo Tolstoy, count, novelist (War and Peace, Anna Karenina). Dropped out after three years at the university.

Harry Truman, U.S. president. Never went to college.

***Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens), printer, riverboat pilot, prospector, newspaper reporter, humorist, bestselling novelist. Left school a year after his father's death, never went beyond the fifth grade. Nonetheless, he still wrote the first great American novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

___________________________________________________________________

**a note on Albert Einstein**

Albert Einstein's education and early career has gone through rough patches and moments of uncertainty.

Try to remember that life is a long journey, and thinking "life is over" because you fail to get into a specific programa at specific time in your life is quite myopic.

At any rate, (depending on your field and the type of resources you need) you don't need to belong to an institution in order to continue your work. Read below:

What sort of education did Albert receive?

Albert Einstein began school in Munich, but does not seem to have been particularly interested in what was offered there. Failure of the family business, when Albert was 15, caused his family to leave Munich for Milan. He stayed there for a year and then moved to Switzerland, where he continued his education at school in Arrau. Einstein hoped to become an electrical engineer and, at the second attempt, enrolled at the Swiss National Polytechnic in Zurich in 1896.

It seems that he continued to show little respect for his teachers, as he was not a regular attender at lectures. He spent considerable time studying physics on his own. Despite the lack of time in lecture halls, he graduated as a teacher of physics and mathematics in 1900, but was unable to obtain a post in the university. It has been suggested that he had not impressed his professors enough, which is perhaps not surprising, given his attitude, and so did not receive their all-important backing for an academic career.

What did he do next?

Albert Einstein became a temporary teacher of mathematics, first at the Technical High School in Winterthur, and secondly at a private school at Schaffhausen.

In 1902 he began work at the Swiss patent office in Bern as a technical expert third class. He remained there until 1909, having been promoted, in 1906, to technical expert second class! He married Mileva Maric, by whom he had two sons, in 1903. They later divorced.

During his time there, Albert Einstein devoted a great deal of his spare time to the study of theoretical physics, and in 1905, received his doctorate for a thesis entitled On a new determination of molecular dimensions. He also published three important papers on theoretical physics.

[mudlark]

Charles Dickens, bestselling novelist. Elementary school dropout.

Ummm, yeah, because his father was in debtor's prison and he had to go work in a boot blacking factory as a child. Growing up in abject poverty =/= not getting accepted to a PhD program, IMO. He also worked his ass off pursuing other schooling once he was grown up, learning short hand and working as a court reporter. Dickens is a great example of someone who took control of his life and worked diligently and carefully to better himself.

I guess what bugs me about this post is the way that a lot of these people are presented as rebels whose genius was just too great to be contained by the ivory tower. I don't think that's a useful model for most people. I think Dickens is a great model, because of his work ethic, willingness to start small and work his way up, and dedication. But if you offered him enough money to finish elementary school and go on to college, I bet you he would have absolutely jumped at the chance. He spent the rest of his life working to expand educational possibilities for the poor. Him dropping out of elementary school isn't inspirational, it's profoundly sad.

[The Pseudo grad student]

Oh wait, but you forgot...

Bill Gates, Microsoft founder, dropped out of Harvard. There are many others but this is the first example I think of.

It's funny because my boyfriend the other day was giving me this speech as well. I'm not quite sure it helped terribly much but I guess it's the thought that counts.

[monkeefugg]

I didn't forget him; I'm just not impressed

The point is that people flourish outside of academia.

Some on the list may have preferred formal education, but the vast majority found Institutional Education constricting and stifling.

It seems that a lot fo you on this forum behave as if you cannot function outside of academia, whereas getting shut out may ultimately prove to be a great thing for a lot of people.

[Strong Flat White]

For anyone anxious about the prospect of rejection:

Not getting into Academia is not necessarily the end of the world; on the contrary, it can be the very opposite--the perfect chance to get out in the 'real world' and do stuff!

Here is a short-list I have compiled...

Jane Austen! Dropped out of ELEMENTARY school, no less... surely Emily Dickinson had a turbulent/non-existent education? I think she dropped out of seminary before making her theology so much better through poetry.

[Strong Flat White]

I'm wondering if rock stars, athletes, and artists should be able to count, here. Seems to easy, eh?

[The Pseudo grad student]

I didn't forget him; I'm just not impressed

The point is that people flourish outside of academia.

Some on the list may have preferred formal education, but the vast majority found Institutional Education constricting and stifling.

It seems that a lot fo you on this forum behave as if you cannot function outside of academia, whereas getting shut out may ultimately prove to be a great thing for a lot of people.

Really you're not impressed by what he's done? I know it's cliche to think about him first but really??

Well honestly, although I can't speak for people on this forum... I'm sure we all behave like this on the forum, being neurotic about receiving word from anyone, but it's just something we do to "fit in" on this forum. I mean don't you think the forum breeds this kind of behavior anyways? (To me, it's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's just a part of waiting.) I may act like this on the forum but yes, but I do have a life outside and being out of school for 3 months now shows that I can survive outside of academia.

Edited March 1, 2010 by The Pseudo grad student

[Strong Flat White]

...Well honestly, although I can't speak for people on this forum... I'm sure we all behave like this on the forum, being neurotic about receiving word from anyone, but it's just something we do to "fit in" on this forum. I mean don't you think the forum breeds this kind of behavior anyways? (To me, it's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's just a part of waiting.) I may act like this on the forum but yes, but I do have a life outside and being out of school for 3 months now shows that I can survive outside of academia.

...And so you come to the forum for precisely the type of alternative perspective that a person with whom you can relate, such as Monkeefugg has provided. I think it's a really good point -- no, academia isn't for everyone, and that's not a snobbish thing to say, I don't think. Just factual.

Of all the worldviews and approaches to life, academia is but one of so many, and within academia, the divisions are still endless. I know people who are seeking a degree purely as a means toward an end; me, I want the degree as an end in itself. Expertise for its own sake, you know? But I'd like to acknowledge that is only a conventional and imperfect measure of expertise, and certainly not the only way of arriving at legitimate expertise. I know people who worship or denigrate higher degrees according to their values; entire families who would scoff at something outside of their rich heritage; paradigms that are, quite frankly, rigid and narrow-minded. This goes for everyone involved - behavioralists vs. postpositivists, humanists vs. social scientists, etc. I have a family member who is pursuing a PhD in neuroscience and keeps calling my field "humanities" regardless of the definitional discussions that we have. The truth is revealing: in his case, it's pure ignorance. But if it wasn't, it would be bias. And he's a dead ringer for someone who would laud "objectivity."

Frightening, actually. These are the boxes that academics create for themselves, probably often as a matter of (in)security. While there are very valid philosophical and practical arguments to be made that such things as, oh, say, international law, artificial intelligence, or competitiveness don't even exist, there are nevertheless entire programs and departments devoted to the study of just these things! That's really interesting to me, because the premise that they DO exist SHOULD indicate something about these programs' curricula in methodology! But they ususally don't - the methods courses just perpetuate the myth that this circle of academics is truly open to whatever the data point to as truth.

Now please don't take offense -- I'm not saying those three examples are non-existent or that they shouldn't be studied (I happen to believe in some and not others). I'm just saying it's interesting that academics - who generally profess to put aside prior values and loyalties in the name of truth and knowledge - aren't really any different from people anywhere else in life. They are, for the most part, bound and guided by the same beliefs and passions as anyone. But our exaltations of higher degrees don't really change any realities. Key among these realities is that some brilliant people will no doubt struggle with the system while some veritable morons will thrive greatly. That's just life! And so, Monkeefugg's point is not only a nugget of solace but also a reality check, all in one. Quite a thing, eh?

[monkeefugg]

Yes, I am 'quite a thing'

Thank you sweetie pie <3

Key among these realities is that some brilliant people will no doubt struggle with the system while some veritable morons will thrive greatly

Well said, SFW

generally, the morons require externally-imposed structure, while the brilliant people find it constricting

Life being OPEN and unstructured, the morons often lag, whereas motivated creative geniuses will get where they want to be

I think that makes being suddenly ejected from the safety and security of academia into 'the real world' so scary.

Also, if you lack social skills, all the astrophysics or 19th century English Literature in the world won't help you succeed in life.

[SomeoneTakeMe]

Yes, I am 'quite a thing'

Thank you sweetie pie <3

Well said, SFW

generally, the morons require externally-imposed structure, while the brilliant people find it constricting

Life being OPEN and unstructured, the morons often lag, whereas motivated creative geniuses will get where they want to be

I think that makes being suddenly ejected from the safety and security of academia into 'the real world' so scary.

Also, if you lack social skills, all the astrophysics or 19th century English Literature in the world won't help you succeed in life.

I do agree that there are many brilliant people who have done amazing things without education. I do not feel that graduate school is a necessity to study or produce great ideas. However, that said, I very much want to be a part of it where I can be around other like minded individuals and learn from more experienced people than myself and have numerous resources at my fingertips. And the hostility in your post makes me wonder... if that's really how you feel, than why are you even on this forum and why would you even bother applying to grad schools yourself?

[monkeefugg]

What did you perceive as hostile?

[2bphd]

The fact that some people who jumped from a plane, survived... is no excuse to jump from a plane.

One should play safe, see what is best for him not what went good with others.

just a thought!

[eastcoastdude123]

Edgar Allan Poe dropped out of both the University of Virginia and West Point. He also married his 13 year old cousin.

All of this is according to Wikipedia, so it is, without a shadow of a doubt, true. A side note to all you PhD applicants: profs love it when you cite Wikipedia in doctoral-level work; it shows that you are willing to look where no else will look for credible information! Its kind of like when Indiana Jones went looking for the Holy Grail. Or, better yet: PhD students who look to Wikipedia for papers are what Yukon Cornelius is to the Island of Misfit Toys.

As always, best of luck to all applicants!

Edited March 2, 2010 by eastcoastdude123

[liszt85]

The fact that some people who jumped from a plane, survived... is no excuse to jump from a plane.

Think of it as a 100year long flight. You have parachutes and other fun stuff in the plane. There are some people who would jump without hesitation and have fun down on Earth rather than sit on their asses for 100 years. I guess that's what the OP was really talking about. However, if what you want to do with your life is understand how a plane works, and want to visit the pilot's cabin someday, maybe you should stick on and let others use the parachutes.

However, if you have no interest in the plane and yet refuse to use the parachute, then you really should contemplate hard and start thinking about your purpose here on Earth (the plane in our analogy here).