Use the school to pursue your goals.
Some things definitely benefit from having a teacher - especially math and languages, take as much of both as you can stand.
Select classes to boost your motivation in things you want to learn but your enthusiasm and day-to-day motivation drags.
If you want to get into a good college, don't follow some other posters' advice to slack off on some "less important" classes. You need to keep up your GPA, there are no unimportant classes. Instead, treat them as practice for anti-procrastination techniques, like doing them first. If you don't care about college, then you don't need to worry about your GPA.
If you don't care about college, then you don't need to worry about your GPA.
And if you don't care about college, make sure that you actually have a realistic plan for what you'll be doing after high school. There are all kinds of near-far/hyperbolic discounting/wishful thinking/self-deception -related issues where you might go from thinking "oh, college isn't really important" when you're starting high school and then realize "oh, but I don't actually have any realistic plan for no-college" near the end of high school, when the deci...
As a continuation of the original Welcome thread (if you haven't gone there, go there fist) I think we need a separate introduction thread for highschoolers.
Who: As a demographic, I think that we can probably be characterized by:
1. Our newness to LW.
2. Our uncertainty about which college or career to choose.
3. (if we are in a public school) Looking for ways to game the system (because we're not learning much in it).
4. Our potential to make a huge impact (the best advantage is an early start).
5. An lack of face to face interaction with intellectual people.
Why: I can think of several things this could help highschoolers with.
1. See where you stack up compared to others your age (We're probably all big fish in small ponds. At least I am. Let's get an idea of what the big pond is like).
2. Make friends with people like you.
3. Consider college and career ideas you hadn't considered before.
4. Perhaps find people to apply with for the Thiel Fellowship.
5. Find a chavruta to go through the sequences with you.
What: Tell us the following:
1. How old/what year are you?
2. How have you tried to enhance your education beyond what's normally offered at schools?
3. How many rationalist/philosophical people are at your school/family?
4. What careers/schools are you considering?
5. Are you going to apply for a Thiel Fellowship?
6. EDIT: link to your old "introduce yourself" post.
If you're not in highschool, tell us what you would have told your old highschool self.