Surprising People who Didn't Graduate

By Joanna Cowan

Walt Disney, Leonardo Dicaprio, Albert Einstein and Jennifer Lawrence. What do they all have in common? You would think nothing much. 

WRONG.

None of them graduated high school. So, maybe you can achieve great things without high school.

Whoopi Goldberg: Left school at age 17 after being unable to keep up with school, due to undiagnosed dyslexia. She also struggled with low self-esteem and drugs. Her mother made the decision to take her out of school but encouraged her to pursue her own education. She looked at lectures and museums. Many people called her lazy or stupid due to her struggles yet now she is a winner of an EGOT, she has won an Oscar and was a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and achieved many recognition humanitarian awards for her work. She was the first African American to receive academy award nominations for best actress and best supporting actress and has won 2 Golden Globe awards. She also served on the Academy of motion picture arts and the Sciences Board of Governors. She starred in Ghost, The Color Purple, Sister act and the view.

Jennifer Lawrence: Didn’t finish her middle school education, leaving school at 14 to pursue acting. She didn't complete high school or complete a diploma/GED (general Education Development test) but she still followed her acting dreams, winning an Academy award, a BAFTA award, three Golden Globe awards, being the second youngest actress to win an Oscar. In 2015 and 2016 for her roles in the Hunger games and x-men she was the world's highest paid actress. In 2013 she was named in the Time’s 100 most influential people list amongst Kamala Harris, Malala Yousafzai, Elon Musk, Michelle Obama and Kate Middleton. 

Tom Cruise: Left high school at 16 and at 18, moved to New York to pursue acting. He changed his wishes of becoming a priest when participating in high school plays. Since then, he has become a world famous actor and stunt man. He has received three Screen Actors Guild Award nominations and three critics' choice super awards for best actor in an Action film. He has also starred in the iconic films Top Gun: Maverick and the Mission Impossible series. He has also been nominated four times for an Oscar.

Leonardo Dicaprio: Yet another famous actor who left school early, leaving in his Junior year to pursue acting. Later after his acting career developed he earned his GED. Leonardo Dicaprio, known for his acting, handsomeness as a youth and inability to date any woman older than 25 (when their frontal lobe develops) has won many acting titles. He has won an Academy Award, a BAFTA award and three Golden Globe Awards. He is also recognised for his environmental activism. He is praised for his roles in Romeo and Juliet, Titanic, The Aviator, The Wold of Wall street and his climate change documentary Before the flood.

Not only actors leave school early though. Famous minds like Walt Disney,Thomas Edison, and Albert Einstein also left school before graduation. 

Walt Disney: Left high school at the age of 16 to join the army during WW1 amongst many other men of the time. Although he was rejected for being underage he served as a red cross ambulance driver. When he returned home from his service in France he won a scholarship to Kansas City Art institute. From there, he continued to develop his drawing skills doing commercial illustration jobs. In 1920, he and his brother Roy established Disney Brothers studio in California. In 1928, he created his iconic character Mickey Mouse. This was the start of the company's iconic reign. He and his brother continued to revolutionize the industry creating classics like Snow White, Dumbo and Bambi. Disney pioneered advancements in sounds, colour, technicolor and feature length cartoons. In 1955 he established Disneyland, a magical theme park for the people. His name is a household name and he is renowned for being a creative film maker. His films have in total 59 Oscar nominations. 

Albert Einstein: Renowned scientist who left school at the age of 15 as he disagreed with the school's strict authoritarian environment and rigid structure. Because of this stifling environment he self-educated which allowed him to explore his own curiosity. Later he enrolled in Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zurich, taking a college entrance exam at just 16. Despite not fitting into the school structure he excelled academically. Einstein developed E=mc^2, the Theory of Relativity, Photoelectric effect and contributed to quantum mechanics, wave particle duality and stimulated emission. Einstein was also associated with and contributed to the Manhattan 

project which was responsible for splitting the atom or the atomic bomb. 

Thomas Edison: Left school at the age of 12, only being at school for a few months, to be educated at home by his mother, who was a teacher. Whilst he was still a teenager, he worked as a trainboy, selling newspapers and lollies to passengers. He never attended university but educated himself to then take a chemistry course at The Cooper Union for Advancement of Science and Art. He then went on to develop first an electric vote recorder, a quadruplex telegraph, a carbon telephone transmitter, and a phonograph (a device which can record and play back sound). He is most commonly known for his invention of the commercially practiced light bulb (at 32 years old), electrical power plants and advancements in electrical distribution. He worked on projects on motion pictures, ore mining and batteries developing the nickel-iron battery in 1901 to be used on railroads.

So there you go. You don’t have to graduate to achieve great things, there are other paths all equal to each other.