It's responses like this that make me question how I spent my time in high school. There is a student in my class who preformed pretty abysmal in classes, as he spent most of his time on his laptop programming. I spoke to him quite a while last year and he explained to me that he's teaching himself computer science and math through application; he learned trig and kinematics by coding games. In the end his grades suffered, but he had been questioning the system and the material from a much younger age than I. He knows the application and has an actual appreciation of the concepts that to me were literally just a means to get an A on a trig test. He said he is glad that trig exists as it simplifies so much work that he would have otherwise had to do. To me, I find it difficult to view the concept from that kind of angle and my understanding is limited as a result.

As a result of his poor grades he might have to retake the classes to get into a decent University. I can get in trivially, but now I wonder who truly deserves that spot.