[whalesalad]

Yes. I was suspended “indefinitely” and after about a week of not hearing from them I just showed back up at school one day. I was escorted to the main office by my teacher who said “uhh bud I don’t think you’re supposed to be here” and then they informed me I was being expelled and sent to a different school. They asked me to write an essay about my experiences during this time, while family came to pick me up, and I told them to get lost.

Ultimately this experience hardened me in a number of ways. In my new school I had a really cool counselor who knew about my wrongdoings but was still supportive. I distinctly remember the discussion about needing a fine art requirement to graduate - but I was red flagged for absolutely no computer classes so couldn’t take computer graphics. Ended up taking ceramics and it was hands down the most fun class I had ever taken in all of school. Ended up meeting my girlfriend there too, losing my virginity, etc. all-in-all it was a blessing in disguise.

The irony is that the school I got kicked out of was a special science and technology magnet school with a ginormous superiority complex. They could have easily turned me into a white hat assistant to help them with the network but they were so insecure (literally and emotionally) that they wanted to make an example of me.

[TheHappyOddish]

I had an almost identical experience (NN based, cracking SAM files with l0pht, expelled). I always thought the same. My old sysadmins at the school were running (without the administrations awareness) IRC leafs and newsgroup servers, and I would have been happy to be part of that.

I ended up ditching school and starting a business, and I'm glad I did. Despite it ending up positive though, the expulsion still rubs me the wrong way decades later.