I was forced into a history class above my year level and my dean would not back down about me doing it. He insisted that I study and focus on history. So instead of failing history and doing well elsewhere, I failed every class, and the stress of it all set me over the edge and I stopped going to school because I couldn't get out of bed in the mornings.

The teacher was great, but it wasn't fair on him or the students that we had half the time a normal class would (since it took the place of social studies), and still had to do two-thirds of the work.

This sounds like a bullshit humble-brag excuse, but I was so used to cruising through school that I was completely unprepared for actually studying and working hard, since I'd never done it in my life. When students consistently fail to meet the bar, they lower the bar, and as long as every student meets the bar, it doesn't matter how far they exceed it. So every teacher was happy to tell me how I'm a bright kid who's going places, but there was nothing they did, or maybe even could have done, to challenge me and help me reach this amazing potential they said I had.

Our school system isn't about learning, or about meeting your potential--it's about ticking boxes and making sure you don't get too independent.

My music teacher did something interesting that I never understood until after I'd left school. He'd come into class, and everyone would be stood waiting for him to tell us to sit down. We'd wait 40 minutes before he'd tell us to get to work. What he wanted was for us, as adults, to take initiative and get onto our projects by ourselves. But none of us figured it out. The school system doesn't encourage you to take initiative, and I'd say it's only going to keep getting worse, but I'm honestly not sure how it could.