I don't see how being opposed to doing busy work in high school (and consequently day dreaming through less interesting classes and coding until 4 in the morning in place of doing homework) makes one anti-intellectual.

I was the stereotype for this comic: in 11th grade I got cold-called by a recruiter who didn't know my age, but saw my resume after seeing my post on a LUG mailing list. I took the job (a jr. sys admin position) essentially drove the grades for most of my classes (except two, where I got A's -- that I'll mention later) down to D or C level.

Sounds like a typical anti-intellectual nerd: barely passing classes just to skip out after lunch to go work a sys-admin job and code Perl, right? Well, out of the two A's the first A was fairly easy to guess: AP Computer Science. The second A was AP US History (complete with a 5 on the exam, highest grade in the class, excellently written essays).

Senior year wasn't much different (except s/Computer Science/Calculus/ and s/US History/Biology/). In the end my GPA wasn't good enough to compete in freshman admissions so I ended up enrolling in a community college. I ended up getting a near 4.0 gpa there and transfering to a to a private university after just a year.

To transfer I needed to write a personal statement. I wrote it on my whole experience: of getting poor grades in most courses, but enjoying the AP program and taking on "adult" work while still a school student.

In community college and university I took courses in philosophy, history, political science and literature all in addition to my major courses.

After college I only interviewed at two search engines and only for mid to senior level positions. I'd think most of my class mates who worried about having a 4.5 (yes, that's possible with AP courses) GPA in high school, Key Clubs and sports teams weren't nearly that lucky (the CS majors amongst them are likely still stuck trying to make their way out of doing QA/support or writing business logic in Java), nor did they end up developing as broadly interested in the intellectual sphere (choosing to concentrate on making their transcripts look good vs. on learning).

That's my story but it's not the only one like this. There are plenty of nerds who may be poor performers in high school but who are very well rounded intellectually and who ultimately end up shining in college (they get in by hacking" their way in: either through extra-curricular like robotics teams [only extra-curricular that I really regret not joining in high school; one member of that team ended up at a UC school with a 1.7 gpa] or by transferring from a community college, or through a alumni recommendation from a boss/coworker).

Problem is: high school instruction generally is poor, teachers coming from bottom of the college class or as a "last resort" option for not getting into med-school/grad-school (while there are many great exceptions, e.g. my calculus and AP US history teachers being the ones who influenced my the most); it's easy to cram one's way into college (and high schools are pressured to become cram schools) and there's too much emphasis on mentally dull labour (physical education classes, sports, busy work) in school.

I agree with one thing: don't drop out of HS to work (I didn't) -- either for yourself or for someone else. Also, don't drop out of college to work for someone else. Do, however, consider doing your senior and junior years of high school at a community college (another regret I have: not taking advantage of such a program offered by our HS/CC district).