2018 | Believe it or not, this ridiculous list of “famous high school dropouts” piece was assigned to me as a NEWS story.

It published in the news section. 

While I was at Dose, each reporter was invited (just kidding, required) to travel to Toronto for a week to work out of the main Dose offices, which was little more than one enormously long conference table lined with computers and tucked against a windowed wall at the offices of the National Post in Toronto.

While I was there, I had to attend a “brainstorming session” about future content. It was at that session that this “idea” for a listicle about “famous high school dropouts” was pitched, by the EIC, no less, who smugly told us that he himself was a high school dropout.

Are you shocked? his face said to the room.

Nah. I wasn’t shocked. For one thing, the guy was a smarmy young dude from New Zealand who’d already told me that his given name was “Tibetan for lotus flower” four separate times over the less-than-six-months I’d known him. (For the record, I hadn’t asked once.) The question of whether or not he graduated from high school had literally never crossed my mind.

I mean, is this something normal people think about?

I had never considered such a thing because I could not have cared less. Sure, I cared a little that he had no journalism experience and was bent on creating a publication that was one big, not-properly-disclosed advertorial, and I cared a little about his obsessive need to make himself seem exotic by repeatedly telling his naming story to anyone who would listen (which is a little tiresome, because I’m a POC, he’s a white dude, so … yeah), but whether or not he finished high school? Nah. Seriously, who gives a shit? It’s meaningless nonsense.

That’s right, I said it: high school is a meaningless waste of time.

A person’s educational experience absolute does not determine, nor should it even influence, their worth. It’s not worth thinking about. Do I think some people are better suited to and prepared for some jobs because a certain level of educational background is necessary to do those jobs properly? Yes. (How one can obtain said education varies.) Do I think high school matters in anything but a perfunctory way because we’re told the lie that we have to attend in order to prepare ourselves for higher educational pursuits? Nope.

High school’s entire value is that it’s part of a system we cling to. That’s it.

Nonetheless, I was assigned this wonderful zinger of a news item.

I have to give Pema (Mr. Tibetan Lotus, the EIC) credit for being on top of the soon-to-blow up listicle trend.

It’s not journalism and it’s not interesting. But it is click bait. We didn’t call it that at the time, but the stuff we were doing at Dose in 2005 was the ground floor of the whole click bait movement. Something to be proud of, don’t you think?

Having no interest in the piece, nor any time or the means to investigate properly, I submitted the following text. I stand by literally none of it. Not the list, and not even the source. Enjoy.

Famous Drop Outs

Maybe leaving high school early isn’t such a bad thing. Some people certainly make a go of it. Here, a list of successful mofos who dropped out and shot up anyway:

• Umbrella borne Julie Andrews
• Everybody loves Lucille Ball
• Spandex-lovin’ David Bowie
• Rebel billionaire Richard Branson 
• Knighted Oscar winner Sir Michael Caine
• Original 007 Sean Connery
• Mean maven Joan Crawford
• A-Bomb facilitator Albert Einstein
• Songbird Ella Fitzgerald
• Queen of soul Aretha Franklin
• News dude Peter Jennings
• Napanee non-punker Avril Levigne
• MGM Studios co-founder Marcus Lowe
• Physical Aussie Olivia Newton-John.
• Civil rights activist Rosa Parks.
• Former lovers Sonny & Cher
• Star Trek the Next Generation’s Patrick Stewart
• Blood lovin’ Quentin Tarantino

Source: www. education-reform.net, 2005.

A version of this ridiculous listicle published in Dose on August 18, 2005. See clipping below. Follow all posts that contain memories of my time as a useless journalist by reading pieces tagged “journalist life”.

Published in Dose, August 18, 2005.