Tragic Dropout

"See, my old man's got a problem
He lives with the bottle, that's the way it is [...]
I said somebody's got to take care of him
So I quit school and that's what I did."

— Tracy Chapman, "Fast Car"

Most people spend their childhoods daydreaming about the day they'll finally finish school and start their adult life. Unfortunately, for some kids, that day comes much, much too soon.

The Tragic Dropout is an upstanding, good-hearted kid who really wants to continue their education. Often they are quite gifted; an overachieving, talented, responsible eldest child with big dreams for the future. But tragedy has struck their family. Perhaps the breadwinner has died, fallen ill, or been sent to prison. Perhaps a financial mishap or serious illness has bankrupted the family savings. Perhaps a sibling, or even the Tragic Dropout herself, is facing an unplanned pregnancy. In some cases, she has been forced or coerced into marriage, and her new husband or in-laws won't let her continue school. Perhaps the Tragic Dropout fell in with a bad crowd or fell victim to The Aggressive Drug Dealer, and the bright future they had ahead of them isn't so bright now.

A series of humiliations follow; the family may be in danger of losing their home or starving in the street. Their children are thrust into premature adulthood, where difficult choices must be made. Alas, for the Tragic Dropout, there is no choice but to drop out of school, kiss their dreams of a better life goodbye, and find a job. This often means any job, no matter how soul-crushingly crappy.

Fellow students and friends will probably express dismay at this turn of events, and may even band together to help raise money, helping their friend to stay in school and graduate. Teachers and mentor figures may try to advocate for the Tragic Dropout at their workplace, find them a working scholarship, or help them continue studying part-time. It may cross over with Student Debt Plot, either because the Tragic Dropout is still stuck with the debts despite having no degree, or because they had to take on predatory loans to avoid dropping out.

In a story on the idealistic end of the scale, some stroke of luck or hard work on the part of the Tragic Dropout or their friends will save the day. This allows the Tragic Dropout to go back to school and graduate with flying colors, thereby delivering An Aesop about hard work, friendship, and steadfast devotion to family.

A more cynical story will probably use the incident as an example of how even the most well-meaning people often just can't get ahead in life. Female Tragic Dropouts in really cynical versions of this trope sometimes turn to reluctant prostitution, males to a life of reluctant crime.

Compare and Contrast with Expelled from Every Other School. Characters who subscribe to Academia Elitism often act as antagonists to these types of characters.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In Black Lagoon, the Mafia Princess Yukio Washimine was forced to drop out of high school to take over her late father's Yakuza group. Needless to say, she wants nothing to do with her father's business and just wants a normal school life, but the family honor compels her to take control of the gang.
• CLAMP:
  • In Tokyo Babylon, this is what happens to main character Subaru Sumeragi after his sister Hokuto is brutally murdered by Seishirou, who has been revealed as the Sakurazukamori. This is especially tragic as Subaru not only wanted very much to graduate high school and go on to college but also that he lost his beloved sister to the person he finally realized he was in love with. Subaru quits school so he can become stronger and eventually murder the Sakurazukamori. This is continued in X/1999 to devastating results.
  • In X/1999 once Fuuma becomes the Kamui for the Dragons of Earth, he stops going to school as well. Satsuki too never attends school once the whole Final Battle begins - then again, she is a genius.
• In Corpse Party: Another Child, Tamaki's school is shutting down. While her classmates can all transfer away and continue their education, her family can't afford it, so she'll have to stay and find a job. As if that wasn't bad enough, the local Girl Posse finds her family's poverty absolutely hilarious, constantly harassing and bullying her.
• Food Wars!: Jouichirou. Dear God, Jouichirou. Jouichirou was widely considered to be the greatest trainee chef to ever attend Tootsuki academy (to the point that Gin Doujima, who graduated with the highest grades in history, considers beating Jouichirou to be his great unattainable dream, twenty-odd years after graduation). The people around him saw his talent and pushed him towards greater and greater things. However, they saw only the talent and not the overwhelming amount of hard work that accompanied and honed that talent. In the end, Jouichirou snapped under the pressure, had a complete mental and physical breakdown, and vanished from the academy in the middle of the night in order to maintain some shred of his sanity. Twenty years later, he has begun cooking again but is content to run a blue-plate diner and doesn't even try to cook at levels his teenage self would consider tragically basic.
• Maria no Danzai: Maria addresses Yuda as a "former student" of the school; he dropped out entirely following Kiritaka's death and locked himself up in his room to hide from Okaya's gang before working as a store clerk. After all the abuse he suffered at their hands, it's quite understandable.
• My Monster Secret: Youko's parents are strongly implied (and later confirmed) to have dropped out of high school due to her father losing control of his vampiric nature near the end of his senior year. At the very end of the series, the principal allows them to receive their diplomas.
• In Overlord (2012), Satoru Suzuki (Ainz's pre-Isekai identity) comes from a dystopian future where all forms of education have become inaccessible to the point that only the wealthy and elite can afford to go and graduating high school means that you are set for life. The people in charge did this to keep common folk ignorant and unwilling to have any form of ideas. Satoru was only able to reach elementary school level education, and when his parents died he was forced to drop out of middle school because he had no other way to pay his tuition.
• In A Place Further than the Universe, it turns out that the reason why Hinata dropped out of school was that her track teammates encouraged her to seek a starter spot and upstage the third-years, then threw her under the bus when Hinata drew the third-years' ire.
• In Silver Spoon, Ichiro Komaba's family farm is piling up debt, and he hopes to either make it through high school before returning to work there to salvage it or make it as a pro baseball player in order to make enough money to pay back his family's loans. Unfortunately, his classmates don't find out about his deal to drop out and start working to pay back the loans unless he keeps winning all his baseball games until he's already lost and his family's farm has declared bankruptcy.
• In Sword Art Online, this happens to Kirito three times, as he points out in Volume 12. The first time was when he got stuck in the eponymous game for two years, resulting in him and all the other school-age SAO players missing out on their education and having to enroll in an SAO survivors' school (although Kirito points out that his old middle school did allow him to graduate). The second time was when after suffering brain damage during Johnny Black's attack on him in Volume 10, Kirito ends up being transported to a government facility and hooked up to the Underworld virtual reality program in hopes of facilitating his recovery. The third time is inside said VR simulation when he and Eugeo join the Imperial Swordcraft Academy in hopes of finding their friend Alice. After intervening to protect their pages and causing the death of a fellow student, the two are expelled from the academy and arrested.
• Fuuko in Undead Unluck dropped out of middle school half-way due to the danger and isolation Unluck, an ability that activates based on physical contact that can potentially kill someone, brought her, all which were not helped having accidentally killed her own parents with said ability when she got it at the age of 8. She ultimately ended up a shut-in from that point onward and become so depressed that the only thing that kept her killing herself was wanting to see her favorite manga series to the end.
• Sato in Welcome to the NHK had severe untreated social anxiety which escalated to the point that he had a nervous breakdown and dropped out of college on his first day, spending the next three years as a hikikomori. The series revolves around his attempts to recover with the help of his friends.

Comic Books

• In the original New Mutants Graphic Novel, Sam Guthrie was obliged to quit high school and give up his hopes for college to work in the local coal mine after his father died of black lung. His first day on the job was marked by being caught in a cave-in, his powers kicking in, and the owner of the mines finding another use for him...
• Robin: Tim Drake reluctantly drops out of high school in order to focus on hero work and tracking down Bruce after Bruce's "death" leaves Gotham in chaos and Dick refuses to even hear out Tim's theory on Bruce still being alive. When he returns to Gotham, he is unable to go back to school since he has to start working for Wayne Enterprises to help keep the company going in the right direction in Bruce's absence.
  • Same thing for Jason Todd, the Robin most invested in his education. He was murdered by the Joker while a high school sophomore. Upon his return from the dead, he was utterly catatonic and in the League of Shadows' custody as well. After being thrown in the Lazarus Pit to restore his memories and mind, he has severe trouble with his traumas, mental health, and the fact that he is legally dead and can't get a GED or go to college.
• Kate Kane resigned from West Point under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" rather than lie about her sexuality and risk outing other students, even though she was an exemplary cadet and had a bright future in the Army.

Fan Works

• Meng Yao in Best of My Love had to drop out of school due to his mother’s illness. Subverted by the end of the story, when he’s on the way to cooking school, and a few lines in the last chapter suggest he's either in or nearly done with his course.
• As a teenager in His History Revealed: A Dr. Robotnik Biography, Robotnik couldn't finish high school despite his intelligence. After his dad died, he was left homeless and on his own. He couldn't attend school without being arrested for loitering.

Films — Live-Action

• In Daredreamer, after being held back for years because of his daydreaming tendencies, the school system has enough of Winston and expels him, forcing him to shape up and face reality.
• Il posto: Teenaged Domenico quits school and takes a job as an office drone. It's implied that he does so against his will. He is annoyed when his younger brother, who is still going to school, gets the book strap that Domenico used for his school books. He gives a Longing Look at a group of teenagers going to school. At one point, he mentions that he wanted to be a surveyor. (It seems that Domenico is being forced to go to work to support his family.)
• It's a Wonderful Life: George Bailey plans to go to college and then travel the world, but when his father dies he finds himself forced to stay in Bedford Falls for the rest of his life in order to keep the Corrupt Corporate Executive Mr. Potter from taking over the Building & Loan and by extension the entire town.
• The character Enrique in El Norte, who had made a perilous journey with his sister Rosa from Civil War-era Guatemala through Mexico to the U.S. as an "illegal alien", was offered a promising job as a construction foreman in Chicago - but when his sister falls deathly ill, he misses the plane to be by her side. In the end, he's shown on a day-labor job in the L.A. area shoveling concrete.
• In Necessary Roughness Coach Riggendorf remembers Paul Blake, a promising high school quarterback from many years ago who never had the chance to go to college because he had to take over the family farm, so Riggendorf recruits him to be their new Freshman star QB at age 40.
• In For Keeps, Darcy drops out of school (on the advice of her guidance counselor), but continues to work toward a GED while Stan gives up a lucrative Caltech scholarship to stay with Darcy. Their lack of further educations creates hardships for them due to a lack of job prospects, but the film ends optimistically with them both planning to attend a local university.
• Towards the end of Margarita with a Straw, Leila's mother dies, and Leila's father, who was never pleased with the idea of his daughter studying abroad to begin with, withdraws his support for her continuing to study in New York City, and thus she moves back home.
• In October Sky, Homer's father suffers a mining accident and has to spend time in a hospital recovering. Either his oldest son Jim has to drop out and take his place, thus forfeiting his football scholarship to West Virginia University, or his younger son Homer has to drop out, thus forfeiting his dream of going to college to be a rocket scientist. Homer's the one that drops out. Homer eventually does go to college and fulfills his dreams.
• Satan's Slaves: Rini had to drop out of college because the family's finances had been spent on her mother's medication. In the sequel, she hesitates accepting a scholarship to a foreign university, as it will require her to leave her family behind, even though her superior points out that not accepting it will condemn her to menial work for the rest of her life.
• In Spider-Man: No Way Home, Peter wants nothing more than to attend MIT with his girlfriend MJ and Best Friend Ned for a fresh start. After going through hell and back trying to fix one mistake after another, in the end Doctor Strange is forced to unperson Peter to repair the damage. Ned and MJ prepare to move on to MIT without him while Peter can't bring himself to reinsert Spider-Man into their lives, his high school records have been erased which forces him to work on getting his GED instead, and his immediate family is gone, leaving him with nothing. But he picks himself back up anyway because he's Spider-Man.

Literature

• Water for Elephants begins with this. Jacob finds out that his parents were killed right before his final exams at veterinary school. He's so distraught that he doesn't write them and later finds out that his parents left him no money because they spent everything they had to put him through school. His skills do give him a job caring for the animals at a circus though. This has an idealistic end as Jacob does get a chance to make up his exams and graduate.
• In A Thousand Of Splendid Suns as civil war in Afghanistan grow vicious and people get bombed every day in their houses, Laila's father does something she thought unthinkable for him (a former university professor): he makes her drop out of school and be home-schooled by him.
• Robert A. Heinlein's Starman Jones. In the Back Story, Max Jones' father died, leaving him to care for his mother alone. He was forced to drop out of school and take up farming to provide for them. He never lost his love of reading and learning, though.
• Francie in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is forced to drop out and get a job to help support the family. She is furious at her mother for making her do it instead of her brother Neely, as he doesn't even like school. Her mother explains that it is exactly why she made the choice she did - if Francie drops out, she'll find a way to go back for her education when she can. If Neely did, he would never go back.
• Carry On Mr Bowditch, set in the 1700s and Based on a True Story, has young genius Nathaniel Bowditch forced to abandon his education to support his family. He is never able to go back but he manages to continue studying on his own and revolutionizes the science of ocean navigation.
• In The Outsiders, Darry got a menial job in order to take care of his younger siblings after their parents died, instead of going on to college.
• Little Women is more subtle than most in its use of this trope, partly because it's chock-full of family loyalty aesops and partly because education for girls wasn't valued so highly at the time, but if you pay attention it's quite apparent that all three older March sisters quit school to help their mother when their father went off to war. Meg and Jo take jobs to supplement the family income, and Beth becomes the homemaker.
• In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Harry, Ron, and Hermione don't return to Hogwarts for their seventh year. It's not like any of them would have dropped out of Hogwarts if Voldemort hadn't truly taken over. Before the release of Deathly Hallows, fans debated endlessly if the trio had been serious about dropping out of Hogwarts or not - or if they would be forced to attend. Word of God says after the war, Hermione went back and finished up her N.E.W.T. studies, while Harry and Ron did not.
  • This is less of a problem for Harry and Ron (and indeed, most of the student cast); after Shacklebolt becomes Minister of Magic, the requirements for becoming an Auror are dropped to "survived the Battle of Hogwarts", making N.E.W.T. studies for the two completely superfluous.
  • Every single Muggleborn is also forced to drop out of school as well because the Death Eaters will kill them.
  • Aberforth reveals he offered to drop out of school a while after their mother died to care for his and Albus' sister Ariana. How tragic it would have been if he did do this is up to debate as 1: Ariana liked Aberforth as a brother more than she did Albus, 2: Aberforth returned the feeling wholeheartedly and could calm her down when she lost control of her suppressed magic, 3: it would have allowed Albus to embark on the traditional trip abroad/around the world young wizards freshly out of school did then. Too bad Albus was set against it and when he did make up his mind to leave on the trip, he meant to take Ariana with him and his friend Grindelwald, which resulted in the fight and duel that killed her.
• Elfie Woodward in the Chalet School series. After her stepmother dies, she drops out of school in order to take care of her brothers and father, who is an emotional wreck and can barely take care of himself.
• In one of the later Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace, recurring character Cab Edwards must drop out of school to take over his family's business after the death of his father.
• In Afternoon of the Elves, Sara-Kate vanishes unexpectedly from school after bringing in a note claiming her family is going on vacation. It turns out she's been struggling to support herself and her invalid mother on sporadic child-support checks from her absent father and forged the note to get out of school when her mother's already failing health took a nosedive.
• In Jack Cloudie, orphan Jack Keats was trained as a cardsharp (= punch-card computer programmer), but could not afford the fees for the accreditation exams by which to legally enter that profession. He reluctantly starts cracking computer locks for a gang of burglars in order to feed his two younger brothers, for which crime he's arrested and consigned to penal service on a Navy airship.
• In Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Percy's mom, Sally Jackson, aspired to be a writer but was noted to be a high school dropout, quitting senior year to take care of her cancer-stricken uncle, who died before the title character was born, leaving her in a bad financial shape that slowly improves throughout the series.
• Kitty from The Secret Life of Kitty Granger would have preferred to stay in school, but after her mum died, she had to help her Struggling Single Father in his store. She persuades her father to let her become a "secretary" at La Mode by pointing out that with her paycheck, he'll be able to hire several new workers to replace her.
• The Brotherhood of the Conch: After Anand's father went missing, his Struggling Single Mother couldn't pay his school fees, and he was forced to drop out and get a job at the age of about eleven, even though he loved school.
• Ever from Even If We Break comes from a very poor family with a single dad and a younger sister with severe anxiety. When they become so burned out from all the responsibilities in their life that they start failing classes, they decide to drop out of high school to focus on taking care of their sister and getting a job with more hours to support their family.
• Real Mermaids: Dillon, a Bahamian sixteen-year-old who appears in Real Mermaids Don't Sell Seashells, is the son of a Disappeared Dad and a mom who wanted him to make more money. He dropped out of school to work as a conch diver. His mom doesn't care where he goes or what he does, as long as he brings home money.

Live-Action TV

• In The Black Donnellys, Tommy was studying to be a painter, but his brothers Jimmy and Kevin get into serious trouble with the local mob bosses. He gets them off the hook, but it costs him his scholarship. He tries to find another way to pursue his education, but his brothers get into more trouble. Tommy knows that without his guidance, his brothers will be killed, so he gives up his dreams and becomes a criminal himself.
• In both the British and American versions of Shameless, Fiona Gallagher dropped out of high school to take care of her five younger siblings. Even at 21, she has to give up dreams of succeeding and having a life of her own because her parents, Frank (an alcoholic deadbeat) and Monica (a flighty bipolar drug addict), were too selfish and immature to bother taking care of their kids. The US version ultimately gets her GED later on.
• In BOB ❤️ ABISHOLA, Bob Wheeler had to drop out of college following his father's untimely death in order to help his mother take care of his younger twin siblings and run the family business.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer had to drop out of college to take care of her sister Dawn when their mother died. Despite this, she manages to get a job as a guidance counselor in Season 7 - but Season 6 played this trope completely realistically, and tragically.
• In the Grand Finale of Everybody Hates Chris, the racist administration of Chris' predominantly white school punishes him for being late by mere seconds, and tells him that if it happens one more time they'll hold him back in spite of him having passing grades with the school year almost being over. Because Failure Is the Only Option, he's late and gets held back resulting in him deciding Screw This, I'm Outta Here. However, it's subverted as he manages to get his G.E.D. instead and finish school earlier than his peers.
• My Rosy Life: After a Promotion to Parent when she was only ten, after her mother left the family, Soon-yi dropped out of school to look after her younger siblings and insure that they could get an education instead. Now approaching 40, she feels her lack of education and job skills.
• Played for Laughs on Roundhouse, where Ivan decides to quit school so he can become a professional skateboarder. He learns his lesson when he boards the wrong train while about to head off for a big skateboarding competition, and later accepts a "Stupid People's Choice Award" from Tonya Harding and Anthony Hopkins.
  "Don't be a fool, stay in school! Reprise the theme song and roll the credits!"
• One of the students in Kinpachi-sensei lives with an abusive older brother as their parents are too busy working to support them to be around much. He originally plans on not going to high school so that he can work early, however, Kinpachi fixes his situation and persuades him to go to high school.
• Suits: Mike's backstory is that he reluctantly agreed to provide test answers for his best friend to sell to cover a drug debt. When the friend was caught, Mike hoped to reduce his penalty by confessing his role, thinking that his own penalty would be a failing grade in the class. However, it turned out that the student that bought the answers was the daughter of a dean and the dean was forced to resign due to the scandal; as his last vengeful act, he not only expelled Mike but also sabotaged his impending transfer to Harvard. At the start of the series, Mike has gone from an excellent student with a bright future to making his money by fraudulently taking law school admission exams for other students.
• One of the suspects in the Cold Case episode "Justice" was this — she was a scholarship student who dropped out of college after being raped by the victim, unable to cope with the trauma of the assault and seeing her unpunished attacker on campus daily.
• Young Sheldon:
  • Paige Swanson, a frenemy of Sheldon's, ended up going off to college at a young age, much like Sheldon did, only her experience was far worse than his. As she points out, women in science are often treated badly enough, but her being an underage girl made it worse. Her colleagues look down on her and she is unable to make any friends. She reaches out to Sheldon, hoping he can relate since he's also a child in college and struggles socially, only to find that he has a group of friends (that he admittedly doesn't want) and becomes envious of him. It doesn't help that Sheldon has No Social Skills and is unable to console her in any meaningful way. She eventually reaches her breaking point and decides to drop out of college. She later turns to alcohol and other substances, and continues getting into trouble on a regular basis.
  • Georgie himself is an odd example. He dropped out of high school in the fifth season, but he was a slacker who dropped out because he didn't care about school and was already doing well as a salesman in Dale's sporting goods store. However, this dropout led to a series of tragedies that would ultimately tear his family apart. First, George Sr. kicked him out of the house (though, at Mary's insistence, compromises by letting Georgie stay in the garage and charging him rent), then his girlfriend Jana dumped him because she doesn't want to date a high school dropout. Dale refuses to let Georgie work full-time because he doesn't want to cause any further trouble, leading to Georgie finding another job at Connie's laundromat/illegal casino, which is where he meets Mandy, a woman in her twenties who he takes a shine to. He lies about his age so that he can sleep with her, and while she turned out to have lied about her age as well, she confessed her true age right before they had sex, while Georgie kept quiet about it until after the two had slept together several times. Upon learning his true age, Mandy dumps him, only to discover that she's pregnant. Once word gets out about the pregnancy, the Cooper family are shunned by the community, with Mary being fired from her job as church bookkeeper. Desperate to make more money for the baby, Georgie, along with Connie, go to Mexico in order to get cheap booze to sell at the casino, end up getting arrested in the season finale. While time will tell how this turns out, we know from The Big Bang Theory that George Sr. will soon die and Georgie becomes the breadwinner of the family.

Music

• In Kelly Rowland's song "Stole," a young girl has dreams of becoming a movie star but never gets to realize her dream. In the song, it's implied that it's because she was killed, but the Music Video shows a different reason for her being unable to realize her dream: finding out that she's pregnant and having to quit school. She is seen at the end pushing a baby carriage.
• In Tupac Shakur's song "Brenda's Got a Baby," the eponymous Brenda goes through her pregnancy while still in Middle School (with her parents, teachers, and friends somehow none the wiser), right up until she gives birth in the school bathroom. Not long after she gives birth, her mother kicks her out of the house because the family can't afford another mouth to feed and social workers have begun to investigate the family, and Brenda has no choice but to leave school because she and her baby are now homeless. It ends with her becoming a Disposable Sex Worker.

Newspaper Comics

• Retail: Part of Cooper's Dark and Troubled Past. His father had abandoned the family when he was young, so when his mother got sick, Cooper had to drop out of high school and get a job just to make ends meet. He makes an attempt to enroll in college during the strip's run, only for The Alleged Car to finally give out, forcing him to give up on that so he could afford a new car. He ends up all right in the end: after being promoted to stockroom supervisor, he works as that until Grumbel's enters bankruptcy, then gets a better paying job at a parcel delivery service. Notably, when Cooper tells Lunker about his mother, Lunker teared up.

Theater

• Biff of Death of a Salesman flunked the senior math exam, and was going to petition with his dad for a re-test but lost the will to when he discovered his dad was having an affair. Since then, he's been stuck in depression and living at home.
• In Hooters, Ronda was forced to drop out of college when her father had a stroke, and has been stuck in a dead-end job at the bank ever since.

Video Games

• Carl Clover of BlazBlue dropped out of the Military Academy in 2197 due to his father Relius conducting an experiment with the Nox Nyctores Deus Machina: Nirvana; as it turned out, Relius had installed his daughter (Carl's sister) Ada into the device and left it half-done before disappearing, forcing Carl to finish the job. Carl turned to vigilantism as a means of tracking Relius down and demanding an explanation, if not returning Ada to normal.
• The Townies faction in Bully are mostly Bulworth dropouts, many of whom were kicked out due to Gary's influence. Zoe is a notable example, though she gets back into the school in the game's ending.
• Oscar of Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn was forced to give up a very prestigious post as a Crimean Royal Knight in order to care for his younger siblings Boyd and Rolf after their mother abandoned them and their dying father.
• The King of Fighters: Although he never really cared for his education, Kyo Kusanagi ended up a dropout once he was kidnapped and experimented on to create a countless number of clones. Certain character interactions and endings reveal that years later, he is still bummed out about not graduating.
• The Chosen Wannabe Mical/Disciple in Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords was a Jedi Padawan who grew up in the Dantooine enclave, and came of age just in time for the Mandalorian Wars. Because so many Jedi left to fight, there was nobody left to continue his training and he ended up washing out of The Order and becoming a soldier for The Republic instead. However if The Exile is female he joins the party and receives the My Greatest Second Chance he always dreamed of.
• Night in the Woods: Mae got into a prestigious college, but suffered a nervous breakdown and had to drop out. Some of her friends and family are resentful that she appeared to have wasted a small fortune because she was lazy, of which explaining is part of the side-stories.
• Persona 5:
  • Futaba was a brilliant Child Prodigy who was deeply traumatized by seeing her mother jumping in front of a car right in front of her and her relatives blaming her for it, and by the start of the game has lived as a hikikomori for the past two years having not just dropped out of school, but society altogether. Thanks to Joker's influence she finds the strength to go on and begins working towards attending high school in the near future.
  • In Futaba's social link it's revealed that her Childhood Friend Kana was forced by her Abusive Parents to drop out of school to make money for them as a Fanservice Model, requiring the Thieves to intervene.
  • The sidequest "O My Young Sister, I Cry For You" in Royal revolves around a young adult who was forced to drop out of school to take care of his younger sister and ends up cracking under the pressure and injuring her, leading him to ask the Phantom Thieves to kill him. They instead help him come to terms with his frustration and realize that he truly does love her.
• Twisted Wonderland: Because he entered Night Raven College too late, Lilia's magic weakens halfway through his third year and he can't finish studying there. Because of this and not wanting to burden his charges, he decides to drop out and retire to a country far away from them.

Visual Novels

• In Blooming Panic, nightowl becomes this in his bad ending after failing his exam for the third time. He leaves the server out of shame, and in his epilogue, he moves back with his Abusive Parents to work for them.
• Happens in Kirari's route of Kira☆Kira, where Kirari drops out of high school to become a prostitute because her father is deep in debt to Yakuza loan sharks.

Webcomics

• Davan of Something*Positive dropped out of college when his sister had a car accident and needed a caretaker. Though in his case he never really liked college, and his jobs after that (billing people for a medical insurance company and running a theater) didn't require a diploma.
• In Kurami, main character Ana had to drop out of college in order to raise her infant cousin Kurami, after the death of Kurami's parents (Ana's aunt and uncle). She continues to work towards being a fashion designer in her spare time, however.
• In El Goonish Shive, when Elliot's mother meets his female duplicate Ellen, she immediately accepts her as part of the family. She admits to herself that she always wanted a daughter, and that this time, she doesn't have to drop out. Later confirmed when Sarah does the math and figures out that Elliot's mother couldn't have been older than 21 when she had him - and taking in other context, was probably even younger.

Western Animation

• Affairs of the Art: Played for Laughs, but still. Beryl the frustrated would-be artist talks about how she was going to go to art school but she got pregnant at 21. This is accompanied by an animation of young Beryl's stomach instantly becoming enormous.
• Cyborg in Teen Titans (2003) mentions that he couldn't finish high school due to his We Can Rebuild Him car accident and the resulting Freakiness Shame.

Real Life

• Charles Dickens. His "idyllic" childhood ground to a halt in 1824, when his father was sent to debtor's prison. At the age of twelve, he had to drop out of school and take work in a bootblack factory. The miserable working conditions affected his entire adult creative oeuvre.
• James Whale, the director of Frankenstein (1931), was forced out of school at the age of 14 to work in a factory. This is recounted in the Dramatization of his final years in Gods and Monsters; he doesn't blame his parents for doing it, saying [paraphrased], "it was like a farmer being given a giraffe, the only thing they could think of doing was slapping a harness on it and having it plow the fields".
• Yet another example is the story of Albrecht Durer, and the Praying Hands: Albrecht and his brother were both promising artists, but in order for one to afford to go to school for formal training, the other had to stay behind and work in a mine. By the time Albrecht returned from training, his brother's hands were too damaged for drawing. Albrecht went on to become the most famous artist and engraver of his era, and his most iconic work is his brother's weathered hands, clasped in prayer.
• Mileva Maric, who was the first wife of Albert Einstein, started out as a promising student. She managed to be accepted into ETH in Zürich, Switzerland (where she would meet Einstein, who was one of her classmates) as the only female Physics major in her class. But she would become pregnant out of wedlock, which made it impossible for her to complete her education. And to make things even sadder, her marriage to Einstein ended in a painful divorce, leaving her with raising their two sons (out of whom one was schizophrenic) on her own without hardly any help from him. She managed to become a private tutor in Physics, Mathematics, and Piano though...
• This can happen to many college students as well. Something comes up (family woes, job necessities, etc.) that can cause a person to have to leave school for the time being and hoping to return, only to find that they can't due to other issues/responsibilities at hand. This is mitigated by there being almost no stigma against dropping out of college as there is against dropping out of high school.
• Yes vocalist Jon Anderson left school at 15 because his father had become ill, working on a farm, as a truck driver delivering bricks, and as a milkman. He decided to pursue a career in music because he didn't want to end up delivering milk all his life.

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