Mark Wahlberg to Alexandria students: Stay in school Mark Wahlberg, one of the world's most successful high school drop-outs, stopped by T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria on Wednesday morning to encourage students to stay in school. The multimillionaire Hollywood producer, former rapper and model dropped out of high school in the ninth grade. The 41-year-old father of four is now pursing his diploma through an online credit recovery program. If my career goes south, I'm working at McDonald's. I'm driving a tow truck," he told the students. That's why I'm going back to high school. Before he took the stage, a DJ transformed the early morning assembly into a night club with blasting music and 1,100 students" hands and cellphones swaying in the air. Wahlberg greeted a shrieking audience. He flirted with Principal Suzanne Maxey, and with cameras rolling, told the students about his rocky adolescence in a rough neighborhood in Boston. He was one of nine children. He ran around with a street gang and clashed with the law. "We thought we were having fun drinking and getting high," he said. But the story did not end well for everyone. "Most of my friends are incarcerated," he said. "This is a much nicer place to be," he said. After he served time for an assault charge at 16, he decided to change his life. He started going to church and found a passion for music and later acting, he told the students. T.C. Williams has been working aggressively to improve its graduation rate since 2010, when it was labeled one of the nation's persistently lowest-performing schools and given federal funding to improve. In 2009, 78 percent of students graduated from T.C. Williams in four years, compared with 83 percent across the state. Just 65 percent of Hispanic students graduated in the same time. By the 2012-2013 school year, the on-time graduation rate was 82 percent, and 70 percent for Hispanic students. T.C. Williams won the celebrity visit through a national contest. Wahlberg was scheduled to visit the White House with a student and college counselor later in the day to speak with an adviser about the importance of improving graduation rates, an Alexandria schools spokesman said. "If you think about what I accomplished without a diploma, imagine what you can do with an education," he told the students.