Dropout By Kara Beebe

The real world can seem like a daunting place to the average high school student, especially when the pressures of high school seem difficult to handle. Sometimes, everything gets to be too much, and the student decides to start life a little early, cut education short, and drop out.
Kara Beebe is one such person. Beebe, a former THS student, left school in late September.
“Some people’s paths are different, and I decided that my path wasn’t to attend school every day and to fight it so terribly. I decided that I am smart enough and curious enough to learn about the world around me on my own,” she said.
Considering the statistics, the term “dropout” tends to have a negative connotation. A person who graduated high school will earn roughly $260,000

Sometimes the way society looks on it in general makes me feel kind of bad,” she said. “I know it’s not really looked at as a particularly good thing, but I know what’s best for me, and it may just be what’s best for a lot of other people, too.”
Evidently, “a lot of other people” agree with Beebe. A total of 3,030,000 students drop out of high school annually. Broken down, that’s 8,300 a day, 857 per hour. The numbers are staggering.
The thing is, these students are not dumb. The reason for dropping out was not necessarily that the work was too difficult, but because students who miss class often are more likely to drop out, they find themselves playing a never-ending game of catch-up. Often, these students don’t have anyone at home who is making them go to school every day.
“They don’t attend regularly and are so far behind that they have to drop out,” Joe Silsby, guidance counselor, said. “Sometimes, it’s lack of support and following through with things at school. No one forces them to be here.”
David Schawns, a former Topeka High student, fell into this trap. He missed school to care for his sick father.
“I spent almost every day with [my father] and missed a whole bunch of school,” Schawns explained. “When he died, I kind of gave up on

GED used to be that you took the test, and then you had to retake the parts that you didn’t pass. Now, you have to pass all of the sections, or you retake the whole test every time,” Silsby said. “They won’t let you take the test unless you take the pretest and do very well, so mostly it involves taking classes and studying and preparing for it. Most of that would be much like going to school anyway, so they haven’t thought it through very much. Some students do okay with that, but the majority of them don’t complete the GED either.” Beebe believes that she will be one of the few who do complete the test.
“I plan to get my GED before my class graduates and to start taking a few college courses in the fall.”
Since she is not in school, she has a lot more time on her hands. However, that doesn’t mean that she isn’t finding ways to keep busy. Currently, her search for a job is taking center stage in her life.
“Right now I’m just doing jobs and errands for my mom to make gas money. I’ve been to the Topeka Workforce Center to search for jobs and create a resume. I’ve gotten a few calls for interviews and filled out dozens of applications,” she said.
She has a plan in place, and after obtaining her GED and taking some college courses, she wants to leave