It sounds like you're an exception and a smart person, then. No sarcasm there.
The problem with being exceptional is that you tend to think of everybody else as exceptional, so the ones who'll naturally fail don't really have a fallback. One fallback can be self learning, but the crazy culture of "College dropouts only work at Best Buy"[0] prevents them from being able to get back on their feet.
(Of the 1,500 or so engineers I've worked with, I've only known one other person with less education. He dropped out of high school and started worked directly for Wolfram ;).)
[0] It's funny how earlier I was accused of using myself as anecdata earlier, but that same user emphatically agreed with someone who used their friend's dropout failure story as evidence that college dropouts will fail. It's so one sided... Editedit: oh, it was you. Yeah, check it out. It's kinda funny.