Does High School Determine the Rest of Your Life?

The author made a claim that high school is only one important experience among many different stages in life. In other words, high school won’t determine the rest of our lives. The article started by an observation of Kurt Vonnegut who believed life is nothing but high school. Then the author used many research to rebut this counterclaim. One is the study released by the National Bureau of Economic Research that one’s social status in high school has a “sizable effort” on their earnings as an adult, which can partly rebut that observation because the effort is not absolute. Another one is the Wisconsin program, and they got the conclusion that many of adult outcomes can be traced back in part of high school experience. The author admits that the life in high school can make an effort on the rest, but not determinative. Many factors affect this, such as popularity, friendship, intelligence and hard work. The author used different studies that “popularity is not all it’s cracked up to be” and students succeed because of dogged effort rather than innate brilliance to support this subclaim. On the whole, the author used many research and studies to support the claim, which is the ethos, adding much credibility to convincing the audience.  

http://ideas.time.com/2013/11/18/does-high-school-determine-the-rest-of-your-life/?iid=op-main-lead