NOT ALL DROPOUTS ARE DUMB AND LAZY.

Spending dollars to attend a four year college right after completing high school doesn’t make sense to many so called “drop outs”. Just as some people might benefit emotionally by taking a break from a relationship, others benefit financially by taking a break from school.

Miles Shaffer, 18, will not be graduating from Community this spring with the rest of his senior class. Instead, he plans to take a semester off before getting his GED. Once he has his GED, Shaffer plans to take classes at Washtenaw Community College (WCC) until he has built up his art portfolio enough to receive a substantial scholarship from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, or SAIC.

“I wanted to go to WCC for a year anyway…Tuition (at SAIC) is like $35,000 or $40,000 a year,” Shaffer explained, “This way I can earn some college credits, and I’ll have a better chance of getting a good scholarship.”

Shaffer may know that he wants to study art, but many others drop out of school because they don’t know what they want to study.
A 19-year-old from Ann Arbor who asked to not be identified is currently taking a semester off from WCC. The 19-year-old dropped out of his large Ann Arbor high school at the beginning of his senior year. After earning his GED around the same time his peers were graduating, he enrolled in a semester of classes at WCC. “After my first semester I decided to take some time off, look for a job, save money, and find direction,” he said.

Chad Hazellief, who graduated from Huron High School last year, is also taking time off from school for financial reasons. Hazellief describes himself as “not financially gifted,” and is currently working two jobs. “I decided my junior year in high school that I was going to go to WCC, I never applied to any colleges,” Hazellief said. Hazellief has missed WCC’s financial aid deadline twice, but plans on enrolling for the coming summer term. “I still don’t know exactly what I want to study,” he said.

Dylan Wood, 19, knows what he wants to study. Welding.

After graduating from Huron High School last spring, and taking classes at WCC last semester, Wood is now taking a break from school. “What I once thought of as a valuable skill became merely a hobby to me, this being the study of English. I figured the best way to tackle my new confusion was a semester off to untangle my brain,” Wood said about his decision stop taking classes. “Upon exiting from Washtenaw I crossed paths with a welder. Whether it be the mysteries of quantum physics or simply fate, I became heavily interested in it. With welding, being a skill or a trade still widely used, and a hobby which could produce monumental art, I had figured my medium,” Wood said.

Wood still occasionally second guesses his decision to attend WCC instead of a traditional four year college. “I think it was a brash and blunt move to so openly cut off lots of options I so readily had available to me,” Wood said. “My mistake simply turned out to be a cure because I was financially tight and Washtenaw is a pocket saver…But then again, I limited myself,” he concluded.