I think Dean's pretty smart, and never had to try very hard to get B average grades in school. Sam's brilliant, and got a huge full ride (but so did I, for one stupid test score), but I feel like he worked to be the best, where Dean would be happy to be average.

Also, if you subscribe (as I do) to the idea that the Winchester boys compliment each other like yin and yang, I bet Dean loves math.

Also, Dean's birthday is January 24th, and most high schools end roughly around late May. Seems a shame to not finish with only four months left.

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I think Dean's pretty smart, and never had to try very hard to get B average grades in school. Sam's brilliant, and got a huge full ride (but so did I, for one stupid test score), but I feel like he worked to be the best, where Dean would be happy to be average.

I think his GPA probably depended on his ability to not let black dogs eat his homework.

He strikes me as able to test his way to a C average, and probably got a lot of comments like "not living up to full potential" written up in his permanent record.

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He strikes me as able to test his way to a C average, and probably got a lot of comments like "not living up to full potential" written up in his permanent record.

This. And back to the "It's what your mother would have wanted" theory -- I think he would have graduated, too.

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Oh! In case any of you people who actually DID do you your homework were curious, it is in fact possible to ace every test an still fail a class.

Signed, got into high school on probation, partly due to failing English in Grade 8 for just that reason.

(And I'm unconvinced re: what Mary would have wanted. I don't think John could at all afford to be sentimental like that.)

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Perhaps an unconscious desire to not have them replace Mary with another mother figure?

I don't think it was totally unconscious, actually.

Well, I think that's an artifact of Stupid White Man Syndrome, i.e. the first season's problematic writing; but I would also call it an artifact of road life. Men are much more likely to be mobile, in our society: as migrant labor, as truck drivers, as fugitives. As far as we know, all of the men on that list are also childless, which makes them even more potentially mobile. That John managed to be mobile, and still raise children who know ketchup is not a vegetable, is a miracle of amazing parenting skills, or of optimistic TV writing.

There is this. And I agree a *lot* with Nutty's reasoning but it's the canon we have, so that is what I try to mentally work with. And I rather like to believe that John did a damn good job given their lives.

I can see Dean graduating. I can also see him, for various reasons (by which I mean, they vary in my head depending on what I'm plotting out), dropping out after he turned 18

I see him graduating in the canon story, even though we have no definitive statement of this happening so far. But I can also see just so many other ways it could have worked out. Which is why I like fic so damn much. I can break my toys and they can still work, in their own way, in another world. Because the reasons Dean might have left school before graduating offer just tasty possibilities but I prefer to see them in extracanonical ways.

it is in fact possible to ace every test an still fail a class.

It really is. Um, yeah.

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Dean would have loved chemistry, I think.

I think he probably finished school. I doubt he participated in graduation ceremonies. I have no doubt that without the pressures of the hunting life, Dean would have excelled in sciences and math, and would have played sports.

It broke my heart in WINASNB that despite their "normal" childhoods, Sam was still a lawgeek, and Dean was a highschool graduate working at a garage. Even in his fantasy he couldn't imagine himself in a white collar profession.

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I see him graduating in the canon story, even though we have no definitive statement of this happening so far. But I can also see just so many other ways it could have worked out.

For me, Dean graduating seems low on probability, high on possibility. The structure is in place that neither boy would have had to attend if John/they didn't choose. When they were younger, John could have taken them wherever, and reported whatever, if he was ever asked.

If they were in public schools, which canon says Sam and Dean were at least at some point in high school, Compulsory education age in Kansas is to 17 or 18 with exemptions granted. This surprised me because 20 years ago one of my friends got pregnant at 16, quit school, and took her GED. I had always thought the age you could leave school in Kansas was 16 and maybe it was back then. Also at that time, during senior year at my high school, the kids who weren't on the college track usually left after lunch for the "work-study program" which meant they could go to their jobs.

I guess I see Dean going on and off to public school, and then being smart enough to pass a GED at 16 or 17 and makeup whatever reason would get him the state exemption. I think that would have satisfied John at that point in his career and sets up why going to college was such a big fight between John and Sam.

Even in his fantasy he couldn't imagine himself in a white collar profession.

This also made me lean toward Dean not necessarily graduating. He is working as a mechanic, but they never said he had a high school diploma, did they? The only graduation picture was with Sam. I agree that Dean is smart, but not academic. I think if Dean had had positive reinforcement with grades in science or math, that would have been reflected in his wish world. Dean, like many, is brilliant in a way that isn't tested in the school system.

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He strikes me as able to test his way to a C average, and probably got a lot of comments like "not living up to full potential" written up in his permanent record.

I can easily see this. I can also see him as charming his way into being given a break on a bad test or a lost paper. Hell, that's probably where he honed his skills.

Dean, like many, is brilliant in a way that isn't tested in the school system.

also

It broke my heart in WINASNB that despite their "normal" childhoods, Sam was still a lawgeek, and Dean was a highschool graduate working at a garage. Even in his fantasy he couldn't imagine himself in a white collar profession.

This is true, and this is why I didn't necessarily find it heartbreaking that he was a high-school graduate working in a garage. My mom's youngest brother got his bachelor's degree from Tufts, and did the white-collar thing for a while before returning to the thing he loved to do - carpentry. It's what he learned from his father, and it brought him joy the way that a job doing editorial work for National Geographic didn't. (It also brought him shitloads more money and a much more flexible schedule, but that's another story.)

I'm honestly not sure if we were supposed to see Dean's career path in WIAWSNB as a full-on failure or not. Maybe I'm not remembering something that was said outright, but it struck me that the big failure was that he had a strained relationship with Sam. Other than that, I think Dean seemed fairly happy with the life he had. Nice house, nice girlfriend (in a job that requires a secondary education), etc. I get the idea that even if he did go on to get a bachelor's degree and hunting wasn't a factor, he'd be happiest up to his elbows in engine grease and auto parts.

We've seen that Dean is clever when it comes to devices and machinery. He built an EMF detector out of a walkman, and he was able to rebuild the Impala from scrap. If he had kept up with academics, I could see him going into some sort of engineering.

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Yeah, I think Dean *enjoys* working on cars. Plus, the wishverse was trying to lull him into a sense of security, an abandonment of his old life and giving in to the illusion. So maybe some of the other career paths he could have pursued and been excellent at (fireman, EMT, cop) would have felt too much like his old life. He had to be a complete civilian for it to work.

(Man, now I really want to read a fireman!AU.)

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It broke my heart in WINASNB that despite their "normal" childhoods, Sam was still a lawgeek, and Dean was a highschool graduate working at a garage. Even in his fantasy he couldn't imagine himself in a white collar profession.

I don't see anything particularly heartbreaking about it, aside from how Sam (and Mary) seemed to include that with the drinking as signs Dean was Throwing Away His Life. Blue collar work is honest productive labor, and it can pay as well or better than a lot of white collar jobs up through middle management.

Or what Anne said.

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