I am a soil scientist. I was able to get into college w/o a diploma. And now I am a Dr. and a dropout.
It’s a long story. Here’s the abstract.
In 9th and 10th grades I gave a series of lunchtime lectures for fun on physics and classical philosophy and some ideas of my own as well.
Someone anonymously nominated me for an award called the Princeton Book Award, which I won. It granted me acceptance to Princeton. The next day almost, I got a call from University of Michigan they would take me that fall after 10th grade. Princeton would only take me fall after 11th grade. I was eager to get out on my own so I took the offer from University of Michigan.
I earned that degree (Fine Art), took 10 years off running my own business in sculpture, then I went back to grad school at Michigan Tech (Forestry) and finished school at Washington State (Soil Science). Now I am a postdoc at Penn State.
That’s how a HS dropout gets to be a soil scientist.
I’m looking at possibly going to Coastal Pacific Aviation, http://www.coastalpacific.com/cpa/cpaflight.html in Abbotsford, BC.
My first two years (with and then an X - ring) would probably be at St. F. X., its in my hometown and has a pretty reknowned engineering program, or at Dal (its not in my hometown 
). The next two to three years (depending if you do a co-op) have to be done at Dal, to specialize your degree I think. X’s program is reknowned for being ridiculously difficult, there is an extra course per semester and it is intense work. All the people coming form X who go to Dal find it a breeze and do really well.
I’m curious if people across Canada have heard about X? Its been ranked by Macleans, #1 in the country for post secondary schools over the past few years but I wonder if that is ever heard of in other places. Here its shoved down our throats repeatedly.
David
I find it pretty cool how you “graduate” from High School. Over here it seems that people just ‘finish’ high school (which incidentally, we call College).
10 years ago for me…and still figuring out what I want to do. I think it’s a great idea to spend a year or two working/travelling before diving in to University. It’s hard figuring out what you want to do at 17.
My 2 friends and I plan to take a year off betweenhigh school and college to hop freight trains and hike around the US and Mexico
Should be lots of fun w/o spending almost any $$ 
I haven’t heard about it, but I know that happens actually fairly frequently that a small, relatively unknown post-secondary school ranks really high when Macleans does their ranking.
i’m going to uni to do a 3yr BA hons degre in British Sign Language at the University of Central Lancashire then hopefully get a job as an interpretor, learn dutch and dutch sign languge then go and live in Holland (world of wheels!)
you just do whatever you want, whatever feel sright for you, it doen’s matter what your friends choose or your parents ‘suggest’ just look at all the options and go for it! good luck and keep us updated!
I finnished High school late last year- btw you Americans have a crazy school year!- and got the marks in my final exams to be accepted into the course i nominated as my first prefference (Ba. arts in International relations) at A.N.U (the Australian national university- in canberra). I deffered my offer for a year to work and play, if you earn 17000 bucks in that year you get more assistance from the Gov’t when you are at Uni. At the moment i am working as a builders labourer during the week and as a bartender on the weekends. Later this year i am going to do some voluntary work at the Volcano Circus group in Hawaii, then hopefully travel about with my Muni in South America, and maybe drop in on all the awesome Californian Muni-ers for a while. What also might be a possibility is trying to get a hospitality job in Canada during the Ski season adn snowboarding with my time off. Good luck with the rest of your schooling, and also for the fun and games after it!
mark