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To the young leaders, the organizers, the rage against the machiners: I was you. Spelled America with three Ks. Wrote angry poetry on notepaper in the back of the class – when I managed to attend. Drew raised fists along the margins of the low-level dittos handed out by teachers in my urban high school. Despised conformism in all its forms and found refuge in the coffee shop down the street from the school where smoke and anger and fierce individualism hung thick in the air, and ink scratched dark on the page.

I didn’t want to be reduced to a number or a statistic, a score or a grade, a label or a stereotype. I filled in the bubbles on tests in poetic form, ABABC.
 And then I dropped out. And that’s when tests got real.

Read the full article in U.S. News & World Report.