He got pretty good grades through junior high and was in the gifted program in elementary school, but by high school his grades started to tank. He never seemed to know what assignments were due in his classes and he very rarely studied. He barely graduated from high school but then mysteriously got an academic scholarship to college. As it turns out, he did manage to learn something along the way because he scored extremely high on the ACT/SAT which got him the scholarship.

He did better in college, mostly Bs, but that wasn't good enough to keep his scholarship so he dropped out after his first year. He's a really bright kid but he is wired differently and doesn't really have the necessary discipline and motivation to do well in school, at least in his mind. His older sister was a straight A student and graduated from an Ivy League school, and I know he had no interest in trying to live up to that standard.

He occasionally talks about going back to college, but I don't know that he'll ever do it because he really has no interest in it. The only reason he would do it is to please others. He's also distanced himself from the Church which I know contributes to some of his challenges, but he's a nice, pleasant kid and he's worked steadily for the past few years and his employer really values what he does. He's slowing making progress, but I don't think college will ever be part of his future and that's OK. We have a lot of shared hobbies and interests and we spent a ton of time doing things together while he was going up. I'm grateful for that, because we're still good friends, even though he disagrees with pretty much everything I taught him outside of a love of basketball, cool cars and good music.