I Never Went to School

I don’t have a degree. I didn’t complete my education. I spent less than 1,000 hours on my traditional education between the ages of 12-16.

You might have seen me say before on Twitter that I’m self taught and I mean it. See I had a tough time with School and my school and education journey was different to most. 

Let me take you back, in the UK most children start schooling at age 5. Like me. I went to school between the ages of 5-8. 

Then comes Junior school which is between the ages of 8 and 11. A lot of shaping and preparation is done towards the end of junior school to prepare you for the culture shock that is secondary school (the equivalent of High School in the US). 

Here’s the catch. I didn’t go to school between ages 8 and 11. I spent the odd week here and there in school, but was mostly out of it. 

I did a single day at secondary school at the age of 12 and the odd afternoon over a period of 3 weeks. 

That was it. Fast forward a year and I got appointed a tutor by the government for 5 hours of schooling a week.

We held lessons at the local library. 1 hour on a Tuesday, 2 hours on a Wednesday and 2 hours on a Thursday. 

That was all the schooling I got. I spent more time on my Xbox, than learning. 

Yet tech has always interested me. Not just any tech either. Complicated tech, if I could learn it quickly or it was easy to work out I was bored. 

So I started playing around with websites. I learned through trial and error, breaking, fixing, then breaking again. 

I started to learn PHP to be able to modify the WordPress theme I used, then I learned about child themes, plugin development and everything in between. 

That journey started when I was only 12, the first time I found WordPress. I found a passion for helping other people use technology that to me came easy but to them was the most complicated thing they’d done in their lives. 

But what’s the point of this post? 

Well we’ll dive into this in another post but I’m on the Autistic spectrum. And this post goes to show that if you feel lost, if you’re a parent of a child and worried about how they’ll turn out, or if maybe school doesn’t fit you either. 

There’s no one rule that fits all. You can be successful, you can have a good job, and get on in life without all the tradition. 

Not once has not having a degree or education held me back. Far from it. In fact it pushes me further, to learn, to grow and continue on my path. 

You can do that too.