High School Dropout or Tossed Aside?

A good friend of mine dropped out of school many years ago.

She was a nice person, friendly, and had not any discipline problems. We had many friends and we were both in the same club.

She was great at art, and she told me it was her best class.

I really feel bad for her. She was held back in tenth grade, and that's when it all started.

I would look at her classes and they were horribly jumbled, always changing her classes, and never gave her any classes she wanted. We had cooking class but you really can't even call that class a cooking class because he hardly cooked anything.

I remember her telling me that only one teacher used to help her with her science class work, one on one. But it didn't work.

What I hate is the fact is that we soon didn't have any classes together but it was clear that something was wrong. She was a large girl, but was never bullied ever, no one could because she stood up for herself. She would be out of school a lot but normally just for colds and things, she didn't have any bad problems. What was funny is that for a girl her size she didn't eat that much.

I remember when she dropped out. She was 18 the school year had only just started a few months ago. No one, not a single person tried to stop her, the teacher that was meant to guide her just smiled and signed the papers like she was just sending trash away. I was with her when she was having it signed. All the teachers she had at the time were kind to her they understood her reasons, all but her art teacher wanted her to stay, wanted to help her. But that was it.

The next day she was gone.

I remember her telling me that school was making her sick. Even her mother who I talked to said that she hated herself for not seeing or doing anything to help. All she could do was to let her escape the Hell we called High School.

It took her a long time to find a job, about four years, but I could see she was loving it. She loved helping people and getting a pay check to help out her mom. Then three months in to it, her asshole boss fired her and then he told her why he hired her, so that she would live him alone and stop asking for a job. Made me sick! Good thing though is now he's fired and the store is gone, but that's issues I really don't know about.

She's been looking for a job since after that.

I ask you when someone like my friend like's coming to school, tried every week and pushed herself to win only to fail, had lots of friends, and was the kind of person who should have been top of the class have this happen?

I ask you to answer. Did she Dropout because she was bad student or was she tossed aside by a system that did nothing but break her?