I think I have a somewhat similar experience, only I deserved what I got, you didn't.

Up until this (school) year I had been assessed by my peers as a nothing. Although I had been doing small-scale computer repair for a while at this time, I still lacked both the self-confidence and maturity to do anything substantial. I did however want change from an awful summer spent mostly alone in my room. Upon returning to school that year I had received probably the worst people in my classes I could, or rather, the people most like me, the people who were terribly unmotivated, for one reason or many. The school had specifically picked out the academically troublesome students based on their previous year and put them in slightly smaller classes with lower expectations but more teacher assistance. This was a great move by the school. This alone was not enough though, as most of the students and myself made a dismal effort to do well, the ability in these people weren't lacking, it was motivation.

My lack of motivation was a progression, I didn't have much motivation to begin with but, due to a summer spent mostly alone I frequently browsed Warez forums and attempted to write a package manager for Windows (I had been taking an interest in Ubuntu and really liked apt-get), and released a customized version of Windows for them a couple years prior. That was the height of my productivity in that school year, because in the following December I had begun smoking a lot.

After that I spent most of my time smoking. I smoked a ridiculous amount of weed, on average three times a week, but mostly on the weekends. I never went to school high however (and I don't plan on it). My friends (and the same people in my classes) were the people I would smoke with, although I paid for a lot of it, as I had a decent amount of income for an 8th grader ($75 per month or so on average, I fixed computers over Craigslist). I hadn't gotten a pipe or any smoking paraphernalia up until summer, and so I would use what was around me. Most of the time those were the insides of pens, with taking out the top where one clicks the spring to bring out the tip, and putting a tiny chunk of weed in it, lighting that end and breathing in where the tip of the pen would normally be. The joy I got from smoking started to end though.

It started to end in June or so. I remember wanting to stop back then but didn't feel motivated enough to do it. June also happened to be when I smoked more than before, as I had nothing to do other than that (This was after school had ended). I would just go to town and smoke with people, practically everyday, and then when I wasn't high I was around people who were, eating Taco Bell, or just walking around with people. However, I started to feel a need to be productive, and that was really when I stopped smoking.

My brother was in his fifth year at UCDavis, when I started sitting in at a class there. That class was ECS30, a 6 week course that taught the foundations of C. I had a fairly limited knowledge of C# and Visual Basic but I really didn't know how to program. This taught me how to do that. My brother had talked to my parents before about the possibility of me taking a class over the summer, and I thought it was a really good idea. So, I took the Amtrak train every Sunday afternoon for 5 weeks (last week was Finals week) to Davis, where I walked in a straight line for about 15 minutes to my brothers apartment on B street. I would wake up every morning at 7:30, shower, eat, have a cup of coffee and leave to go to class for two hours.

Taking this class was one of the best experiences in my life. Although the people weren't by any means entrepreneurial, it made me want to do something with my life. Just walking to the class was amazing. Passing the various lecture halls and weird decorations. Seeing all the sleep-deprived people on bikes heading to and from their classes. Wondering if people would give me weird looks seeing a 14-year-old with a significant amount of stubble go to a college class.

The class itself was fantastic, I would generally sit in the back due to fear of being called out for being 14. I was also the one who asked the most questions. I don't know if it was summer, if these people were just plain shy, or if people didn't really care about the subject, but few other than me was asking questions, and the professor seemed to like that I was asking questions. I don't know if he knew that I was 14, he probably had guessed though.

When I walked back to my brother's apartment I played a lot of Fallout 3 and did a lot of homework. The homework was incredibly time-consuming. That was by far the most time I had spent on school throughout my life. In the beginning I did all of the homework, and it was amazing. As it got more time-consuming I lost the patience for doing the homework (some were 20+ hours and I hadn't been doing more than 25 minutes of homework my entire life). But, I learned an enormous amount and got the foundation and drive I needed.

I didn't do anything with that drive for a short while, other than just thinking about a few ideas. I spent a lot of time thinking about those ideas, I had at one point a folder of about 20 different ideas I thought were good, and three that I thought were excellent. One of those three is something like I'm working and spending the majority of my time outside of school on, it's called Jantire. It's a document reader for a new format for posting, combining the learning-capabilities of a wiki entry with the discussion-elements of a forum post. I applied to the Summer 2011 Y-Combinator session and went to one of the dinners to review the Y-Combinator applications with Alumni and fellow applicants.

I feel like I'm finally earning my keep.