The problem is college admissions. Sonya says, "Skipping college is almost middle-class mainstream at this point," but she's dead wrong. It might be mainstream

The problem is college admissions. Sonya says, "Skipping college is almost middle-class mainstream at this point," but she's dead wrong. It might be mainstream among the lower classes, but they aren't doing too well these days, are they? And it's mainstream among a certain fraction of the upper-classes who have enough of a safety net in family wealth and connections that it doesn't matter. But for the vast majority of the middle classes, the true middle classes, college is still very much a mainstream choice, and increasingly important as a backstop against falling into the lower class. If you don't have a high school transcript, your chances of getting into a college go down by quite a bit. As for, "I could have spent three years writing and reading and working on interesting projects, instead of enduring the sociocultural hell of high school," I nearly giggled when I read that. Maybe Sonya was among the special 1% of kids who would actually have done that, but realistically, if I had skipped high school, I would have spent my days playing video games and getting into trouble, not "reading and working on interesting projects".