The idea of becoming fully financially independent both scares me and excites me. It is very easy to become accustomed to a certain quality of life, or the "norm" and refuge that families or government grants provide, but such things are transient or are additional; they come due to the good grace of humanity, and I'm no longer a child. It feels like only yesterday, I am a teenager with a sense of entitlement to the income of my parents, and to an extent that perception of entitlement can unfortunately pervade itself through one's life.

My name is Sam, and I'm a gay high school dropout. It's not because I wasn't smart, or couldn't do the work. Until about middle school, I was the kind of straight-A apple-polisher who made Lisa Simpson look like Ralph Wiggum. It was the bullying. If you're reading this article, you probably know what I'm talking about. Not a single class period went by without someone slinging anti-gay slurs at me. Not a single day went by without someone hitting me, tripping me, or pushing me into a locker.

I'm currently enrolled in a class called "foundations of education" which essentially is what it sounds like, a class on the history of teaching. As you may guess a class on the history of teaching isn't the most interesting class and due to this I was prone to skipping class to spend time with James (Time definitely well spent).