Judge Smails
10-10-2006, 04:47 PM
<p>Nice work if you can get it:</p><p><font size="2"><a href="http://www.palmbeachpost.com/accent/content/accent/epaper/2006/10/08/m1a_TSQUARED_1008.html" target="_self">Teen scores fame, earns six figures playing video games</a></font></p><p>The 18-year-old high school dropout from Jupiter whose real name is Tom Taylor has managed to turn himself into a small but lucrative franchise,<strong> </strong>easily earning six figures through gaming contracts, product endorsements and a successful video game tutoring business.</p><p>And all the while proving thousands of parents wrong: You <em>can</em> get paid to play video games.</p><p align="center"><strong>*****</strong></p><p>Inevitably, conflicts sprung up between gaming, which was generating cash, and school, which wasn't. In January 2005, a few months into his senior year, Taylor sat down with his mother. For the past month, the two of them had been going back and forth about whether Taylor should stay in school. He'd done extremely well on his FCATs and his grades were good, but he was missing a lot of classes at Jupiter High.</p><p>In the end, it was his mother's call.</p><p>"He said to me, if I wanted him to stay in school that he would do it," Birchenough says, "since he knew how much it meant to me since I'm a teacher. But, he said, 'This is the opportunity of a lifetime.'</p><p>"It was a hard decision for him. It was a hard decision for me."</p>