Vested interest in education? That's not how I'd describe my relationship with it. My feelings towards education has more to do with "vendetta" than "vested interest". The one-size-fits-all style of education I was exposed to was more akin to torture than learning. It's not until now that I'm actually learning anything from my teachers. My teachers never understood me, they thought I was trouble when I was really the only kid who actually wanted to learn something, the one kid who did not want to sit down and go through the same drill as everyone else. I never did any homework, or school work for that matter, until the age of about 16. Even though I never learned anything in school up until that age, I can still say that I was way more educated at 16 than most other kids my age, simply from learning things that interested me in my spare time. Thinking back on all the time I was forced to waste makes me so angry, all the things I could have learned if it wasn't for the mandatory education which taught me nothing. I'm 19, and I am already bitter, things needn't be this way.
I think most of us felt that way in highschool. It gets better. I mean, no, you are not a precious snowflake, and yes, nobody cares about how 'unique' you are, and you will have to get over that. We all do. Society won't shape itself to you. But that truth becomes easier to swallow as you get older, and as an adult there is a huge variety of different sub-societies you can choose to live among; exempting service personnel, I can go weeks without talking to, say, non-linux users if I so choose (yes, not just work and home. It's not at all unusual for me to go to a party and find that I am the least technical person in the room.) so while you do need to shape yourself to something that fits into a society, you have a great deal of choice as to which societies you want to fit in to.
This is the new thing about 'fitting in' ; I know this is going to sound weird to anyone just coming out of high school, but trying to impress my peers? now actually makes me a better person- because my peers are no longer other highschool students. The things my peers are impressed by, generally speaking, are things that I also value. I can choose my peers; It's amazing, really. It took me a while to figure this out after I finished highschool, as I didn't go to college, I went straight from highschool to a .com job, so it was a bit before I got the hang of all the adult social stuff. (As far as I can tell, most people learn that sort of thing in College.)
Also, as you are now an adult, and there are far fewer situations where you can be told to perform some arbitrary and boring task where you can't quit. If you have the ability to make money, you can make almost all boring rote tasks that you actually want to get done go away by paying various fees, if you like.
I mean, yeah, you still don't have total control over your life, and you do need to fill out certain forms and pay certain fees at certain times of the year, but man, compared to being under 18? it sure feels like total control. If you have the skills to get a good job and you don't have children, you will have an incredible amount of freedom to make your life be exactly what you want your life to be.
Figure out what you want, and then figure out how to arrange your life so you can have it. As an adult, yeah, nobody is going to go out of their way to help you, but you know what? as long as you don't disturb others, they also aren't going to stop you from taking what you want.
People get better, too. Most people are horrible people when they are teenagers. I know I was. I mean, I'm not great now, but I'm vastly easier to get along with. Most people are significantly easier to be around at 25 than at 17.
Go, make your life what you want it to be. The bitterness will fade.
The experience that I have so far in the education system is pretty much that it kills creativity. To me one of the source of the problem is that most evaluation and work we do in school are made to be solved in one and only way. And when you manage to do something creative out of it, nobody notice and it just passes as if it was something normal. It seriously kills your motivation to find more creative solution. After 3 month in CEGEP* in a computer science program, I lost all my motivation to try to do better stuff. I even had final project where my team wanted to do some very interesting and the teacher did pretty much everything he could to make it flat and boring. That was the most discouraging project I ever did of my life.
Ken Robinson has several talks regarding education on TED. I really love them and find them very inspiring. I listen to them regularly. If you never looked at it, I really recommend it. It opened my mind on a new type of education.
You learned to feel that you were entitled to be understood. Do you think Shakespeare sat around and whined that nobody understood him. Great minds do not let anything get in their way. You speak to your mediocrity.
