I wasn’t interested; I didn’t care. You know, I just wanted to go and have fun. I wanted to see my friends and I wanted to go party. And I wanted to have a social life. But I could not make school into a social life . . . so I would “ditch” [cut school] all the time.

Sometimes I didn’t know how to do the school work or I didn’t feel like it. My friends encouraged me to go with them to the movies. I made all Fs (failing grades) and that was discouraging. I like fun and attention.

School was boring because they were not teaching me what I needed to know. They were not teaching what will help me in the real world.

There were too many diversions in school. There were...