I did not really enjoy school. I learned very little that I used later in life there. I made 5 or 6 actual best friends forever. The school system had nothing to offer that I needed to learn and since I didn't know what I needed I just coasted through. Of course I wish there were curriculum on natural healing and wild foods, survival etc...I might have made them my professions. But hey! I am doing them now. I can become a resource or just browse in the bushes.
I didn't like school, I did enjoy a few lessons though but we moved around a lot when younger so I was always the new girl in school. In high school my 2 goods friends went back home, one to South Africa and the other one to New Zealand, so I was quite lonely in my final year. As far as I know they have never returned and I've never tried to contact them.
I really liked school, from kindergarten, through my graduate classes. I made friends with many classmates, got elected to school club positions, was a sports letterman, made it into a college honor society. School mirrored what my life would become, post academia, to a certain extent. Learning was, and still is, my greatest joy, in life.
i moved around a lot having a single parent (and a couple of stepfathers) being raised by close relatives and occasionally going to boarding schools. was below average but managed to win over most teachers. i do remember my first kiss in preschool... finding a gun and passing it around in 4th grade (nobody was injured.) fighting the class bully, loosing badly, but winning his and other people's respect in 8th. didn't get much farther than sophomore in high school because early on i knew what i wanted to be and practiced diligently until i was good enough. after a full career in action sports (skateboarding, snowboarding, and surfing) as a performer and product developer, i parleyed my experience to introduce industrial education classes (vacuum lamination) to inner city high schools here and abroad. it was gratifying to present subjects such as physics and art, together, and in a relatable format which offered real world perspective.
my real (and on-going) education is a constant struggle with many of the assumptions (and abstractions) we're all bound to inherit or are taught. breaking from those norms is very difficult or nearly impossible within our social constructs. the more i try to understand things... the less interested people are in what i know.
I can identify with what Von says except for the blossoming. I didn't and had to endure the iddy bitty titty jokes all through Jr and Senior high school. PE was especially cruel. I had developed bad OCD during grade school and that led to teasing all through school and life even at my current age. In Jr. and Sr. high we had to wear skirts or dresses (no more than 2" above the knee) in warm weather except on Friday and then jeans were OK if not too tight. During the winter months, we ranch girls would wear jeans, and the city girls, skirts and leggings or sometimes slacks, and we ranch girls were called bronco busters when we wore jeans. I was the only girl in shop class both wood and metal, also electronics, the only licensed ham radio operator, and girl electric guitar player, so I wasn't popular except with the truant officer that during my senior year visited my office in the back corner of the snooker hall frequently. I was never in when he called due to class dodging boys that owed me money for lost snooker games and a warning helped reduce their debt. I graduated by a slim margin and only after taking a final test again, after 3 days to bone up on the material. I got a D which was amazing due to trying to learn a year worth in 3 days.