High school can be a difficult time for many, the pressures of achieving good grades, deciding on a career path and gaining a place in college are simply too high for some people and many decide to drop out of school altogether. In fact, there are 1.3 million American students who each year decide that school is no longer for them and dropout of the education system. Some of these students drop out to enter the world of work whereas many drop out and never go on to achieve any great success. There are however some, who have dropped out of school and end up going on to achieve outstanding levels of success and today we’re going to take a look at some high school dropouts who bucked the trend of failure.
TB Joshua
The highly influential Nigerian pastor and prophet TB Joshua dropped out of high school after just his first year, a choice that many would consider as reckless when it comes to your career choices. Joshua however would go on to prove everyone wrong, he started working on a chicken farm and running Bible study groups for children before receiving a message from God to start his own church. Joshua obliged and went on to create the Synagogue Church of All Nations, one of the most famous churches in the World with a huge following and congregation. Recent tourism statistics state the 6 out of 10 people who travel to Nigeria each year are heading for Joshua’s church and its popularity continues to grow each year. Joshua has utilized the internet to spread his message too and currently has over 2.5 million subscribers on Facebook and on YouTube, he and his church have over 170 million views and over 400,000 subscribers.
David Karp
David Karp had an exciting career ahead of him when he dropped out of a highly elite school of science at the age of 15 to start a website idea which he wanted to develop. That website was Tumblr and after working hard in his mother’s apartment for years building the site, Karp would go on to sell the website to Yahoo in 2013 for $1.1 billion, a trade which netted the young Karp a fortune of around $200 million and saw him continue his career as the CEO of the business.
Philip Emeagwali
The man who is considered by many as one of the unsung hero’s of the internet, Emeragwali left school in Nigeria due to to war conditions and a lack of money for tuition fees. The math prodigy would go on to self-teach various forms of math and calculus and took himself to America where he eventually gained a diploma and a college education. In 1987 the intelligent man conducted a project which would allow lots of computers to communicate with each other across one network, the study saw him win the Gordon Bell prize in 1989 and he has since been hailed as one of the fathers of the internet.
