From about 6th or 7th grade through graduation, school is a weird environment all its own.
Some might say it is similar to being in prison though…
At least for part of high school that’s what it felt like at times for me. The biggest issue being the forced labour - sorry, I mean “homework” - of which the burden was substantial and the benefits not at all clear.
At the time I remember being very depressed that even when I was at home and away from the school that I often didn’t enjoy, instead of indulging in my hobbies (which, coincidentally, is how I learnt practically all of the specialised skills that I used to kick off my techology career) I was forced to complete endless hours of dull and unsurprising homework. I understand the benefits in moderation but the sheer amount assigned to me was actively detrimental to the point of robbing me of a big chunk of my free time as a teenager.
I desperately wanted to continue teaching myself programming (this was in the early 90’s) but instead I had to complete some mindless essay about sedimentary fucking rocks.
Not to mention that I had undiagnosed ADHD so the homework took me forever and created considerable stress.
Having said that, it was so bad (and felt so pointless) that even though I was academically pretty strong and had wanted to go to University from quite a young age, I instead quit school at 16, immediately got a job in a business consultancy (using my self-taught programming/design skills) and was running small software projects for huge multi-national businesses within a year. By the time most of my peer group graduated University, I had about 5 years of a software development career under my belt and had already started my first business.
In retrospect I don’t think I would have done anything different, apart from putting about 500% less effort into the sedimentary rock essays.
I think we tell ourselves stories about how we got from A to B (like mine above) but in reality it’s never quite as simple. It’s always easier to rationalise and construct what feels like a meaningful narrative in retrospect.
For all you know, the choices you made, even if they now feel slightly uniformed in retrospect may still have been 100% right for you!
I suppose reflecting on my previous comment, the flip side of the situation is that I was incredibly lucky to go to a pretty good school (even though I didn’t always like it much) and the single biggest benefit I got was the utterly amazing life-long friends I made there, who are still great friends today. Those friends have had 1000% more positive impact on me than my schooling did, but I wouldn’t have met them without school.
Interesting. I've often thought that this would have really helped iron out some of my character flaws early on too. At least in the military you are willingly signing up for an experience that you know will be hard, but likely also rewarding and character shaping.
Everyone I know who has been in the military seems to have developed a more resilient and disciplined approach to life which has served them very well later on. Although clearly it's not universally good for everyone who takes this path.