[caseymarquis]

I dropped out of high school with a 0.5 GPA, I now own a sizable percentage of a software company valued at a life changing amount of money. I cannot emphasize enough: Do not do what I did.

It has been an uphill battle for 14 years. At every single turn there have been disadvantages, challenges, and closed doors because of the choices I made as a teenager. Highschool is terrible for many of us. Hell, being a child is god awful. Apply yourself anyway. The bare minimum to get a STEM degree at a state school is fine. Don't worry about perfection, just passing is enough if that helps you stay sane. If you really like programming and hacking on electronics (and you're half decent at it), your grades will never matter after you land your first job. Put something cool on github and the right people will hire you for that first position anyway. At that point you get paid to hack on things all day long. It's a blast. Highly recommended.

Everything is ten times harder if you don't hit that minimum standard though. If I could go back in time I would check those boxes.

Final thought: Money has diminishing returns. I use it as a proxy for success above, and it's nice, but I would easily trade places with many of my employees. They work half the hours and spend more time doing the kind of work I enjoy. Once you have enough to live comfortably, optimize for something other than money.