Overwhelmed by College? Why Not Go Back to High School?

With Boston as perhaps the world’s foremost college town, a large part of our population is staring down Fall Semester’s final exams. For some, this period is little more than another opportunity to display a sharp mind. For others, however, exam period is one of struggle, frustration, and pain.

To this latter group we suggest an alternative: Just go back to high school.

It’s been done before…

A twenty-five-year old Kenneth Lickiss took a Greyhound to Salt Lake City. When he got off the bus, he became sixteen-year-old Scott Davion, an orphan and runaway from NYC with no formal education. This “troubled teen” went to a charity center, told a missionary of his “tragic background,” and, within weeks, was placed with a foster family and enrolled in high school, where he soon garnered recognition as a scholar and stud. Little did his peers know that this high-honors student / seductive romantic was practically old enough to be their father.

What an inspiring story. But is it really all that incredible? Look around…plenty of people could pass for anywhere from age sixteen to twenty-six. Would a recent college dropout really have to be a mastermind to hop a bus to some random place and pass himself off as an orphaned teenage runaway who’d never been to school? Scott Davion sure made it work – a little too well perhaps.

When his real identity surfaced, the impostor was convicted of fraud charges and did time in the slammer. Incarcerated or not, Davion is more than a con man. He’s a compelling figure who proves that, yes, you can get back your past. And as far as we’re concerned, prison is a minor setback.

Scott Davion, you are a hero.

Post contributed by Ray Cavanaugh. Image of Scott Davion's mugshot.