Withdrawal Checklist High School: Fill & Download for Free

Colleges with selective and competitive admissions are probably more likely to admit promising students who are partway through high school. That’s because selective colleges admit a small number of promising students after a thorough examination of the admissions materials. They are more likely to argue with each other over a file instead of following a checklist. One, Bard College at Simon's Rock, is specifically designed for young students. But please note that, to an admissions committee, a student who applies for college as a sophomore or junior in high school looks like a go-getter. One who applies as a high-school dropout looks like a quitter.I’m not buying the social and emotional maturity argument. Many gifted students are a little socially awkward, but put them in a room with their intellectual peers instead of their same-age peers, and lags in their social-emotional development may quickly disappear.Many gifted students grit their teeth and bear 4 years of high school, only to get to college and find that they finally have challenging work, and they finally have a blossoming social life at the same time. If any of that had happened when they were younger, they would have a better shot at learning both time management skills and social skills.So, in my personal—yet informed and experienced—opinion, keeping a gifted student in high school when they are ready for college is both cruel and misguided. In my experience, this is more likely to lead to dropout and a failure to continue education than it is to better preparation, college graduation, and graduate school.

Let me state that I’m not a trained professional - I’m just the mother of a spectrum-teen. In my conversations with other spectrum-moms, we’ve often said “maybe it’s the next stage of evolution” or “it’s like they’re Vulcans”But all joking aside - there are often symptoms that cause serious difficulties. For example, my son has difficulty with understanding personal space - meaning, he’s in yours ALL the time. Teaching him not to touch people without permission, not to nose into other people’s phones or computer screens, not to stand practically in my armpit… these are all byproducts of his spectrum disorder.Hyperfocus for him can be wonderful if he’s doing his biology homework, but when he’s on YouTube it’s a problem. He can get sidetracked for hours, and unplugging him can result in withdrawal symptoms like substance abuse. In fact, we’ve recently begun treating him for Internet Addiction Disorder - his hyperfocus in this case led to addictive behavior that was having a negative impact on his life.Executive Dysfucntion is the big one in our house. My spectrum-kid is academically brilliant, but he can’t organize his way out of a paper bag. We started when he was young with visual prompts (I developed a system using popsicle sticks and marbles), we’ve since moved to a laminated checklist for morning, afternoon, and evening. These include the most basic of things related to personal hygiene (deodorant, brush teeth, shower), general housekeeping (pick up clothes, put shoes away), to life skills (wash sheets, do laundry). After 3 years of consistent repetition, he’s finally starting to develop habits. It takes much longer for him to move something from the executive functioning part of his brain to the habit part of his brain.All of these symptoms are part of his spectrum disorder - they are impediments to him moving through the world independently while being aware of and considerate of the other humans moving through the world.I could write a whole separate answer about the co-morbid diagnoses that tend to align with spectrum disorder (anxiety, ADHD, OCD, Sensory Integration disorder, Internet Addiction Disorder)The end result is - my kid needs help. My help, and the help of his teachers and the other responsible adults in his life. Recognition of his “disorder” assists in getting him services (speech therapy for pragmatics, occupational therapy), accommodations (extra time to move between classes, fidgets, seating arrangements), that make his life in high school less stressful and more productive and enjoyable. He could exist without these modifications and probably be ok but, as a counselor said to me, he deserves to be better than “ok” he deserves to be “really, really good”. We all do.

Here's a good checklist everyone should start with:Create money to invest: Don't spend at the very least 10% of your take home pay. You need to find ways to live below your means so you have money to invest. Many save significantly more, into the 20 - 25% range. With a high potential dentist salary, saving a lot would be fairly easy right out of school while you're still used to living cheap.Build a buffer: Save 3 - 6 months of your salary in cash and "invest" the money in a combination of savings accounts, money markets, and possibly short term CDs as a safety net in case something goes wrong. Cars break down, people get fired, unexpected medical conditions happens. Plan for them with a small pile of readily available cash.Pay off high interest debt: In the current economy, it's challenging to reliably earn 5% - 7% annually with small sums of invested money. Go for the sure thing with 7%+ rates of return by paying off all your loans over 7% (credit card, car loans, house loans, school loans, etc). Anything under 7% might still be a good candidate to payoff fast. It's possible, however, that the investment returns of other things like 401k matching (see below) can be better than paying off lower rate loans so it's less clear as loan interest rates get lower where the better investment is.Take free money first: Once you have a small pile of cash, and high interest debt paid off, you're ready to invest. Start with places that give you free money. Often employers hand out free money in terms of matching contributions to 401k or retirement plans. Don't turn down free money. That will boost your investment return far beyond what your small starting amounts will earn anywhere else.Now, it's time to invest...Once you've done all of the above, the real fun begins. If you're following along, you'll still likely have 5% - 7% (or more) of your salary piling up every month. You'll also have a nice cash buffer, little to no debt, and possibly nest egg of retirement money in your 401k.Time to figure out what to do with the rest of your investment capital.There are three main places to put money that have reliably demonstrated the ability to generate decent returns on money over time (above and beyond inflation):Businesses (companies you hold a controlling interest in)Real EstateStocks (companies you hold equity in but don't control)So what about you?You're young. That means you have a long time horizon before you'll need the money and can take higher risk. I wouldn't recommend things like bonds, gold, pork bellies, or the like. You're also positioned to have highly marketable skills when you become a dentist. I would recommend:Opening your own dental office and spending the money on building leases and staff and learning how to be a business owner.Buying investment real estate (residential or commercial) and learning how to be a landlord.Buying stocks, probably well diversified, low fee index funds like SPY or VTI to start. If you demonstrate an ability not to freak out when your portfolio is chopped in half, and you like to read financial statements and evaluate public companies as investments, you could try your hand at picking individual companies, eventually.StocksStocks can be an easy fire and forget weapon in the investment arsenal that have a few, key advantages:You can invest relatively small amounts of money, as little as $700ish/month, without high trading fees (Scottrade does $7/trades which makes the trading cost of a $700/month investment only 1%).You get high levels of diversification. If you buy something like SPY or VTI, you're actually investing in 500 to 5000 of the biggest most successful companies in the United States. Go with a blend of VTI and VEU and you're investing in around 8000 of the biggest companies in the world.If you pick a couple of highly diversified index funds and buy the same thing every month, you don't have to think much and can focus on making money as a dentist. Open an account at Scottrade or Etrade, set up a monthly withdrawal from your savings account, and login once a month to buy the same thing until you retire. Over your time horizon, 30+ years to retirement, you'll likely average around 10% returns per year if you just put the money in something like SPY every month and leave it alone for 30 years.Picking individual companies, alternatively, requires a large amount of time learning how to evaluate companies, read financial statements, etc. as well as a high degree of discipline. I'm not convinced many people are very good at it because they often lack one, the other, or both.Business and Real EstateOpening a dental office, and buying real estate takes more effort than regularly buying index funds, and also takes much more up front cash. Both can also give you something fun to do (I personally like owning my business and being a landlord), and deliver fantastic returns, better than general stock market returns if you're good at either.Businesses and real estate can also be massive time sucks, be horribly unpleasant, and be fantastic wealth destroyers if you don't take the time to get good at them and give them the attention they require.Stocks, business, and real estate are the three keys. Once you get through the four step checklist at the top and are ready to start investing, you'll likely want to do a lot of reading and talk to a lot of folks before putting too much cash in any of them.Further ReadingGreat first investment books include:The Wealthy Barber, Rich Dad Poor Dad, and The Millionaire Next DoorThere are also a variety of fantastic books on starting your own business:The E-Myth Revisited and The Lean Startupreal estate:Landlordingand stocks:Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits, Beating the Street, and The Intelligent Investor