You really never did anything worth caring about in high school, academically, at least. Math was a series of formulas to memorize and various sequential combinations of said formulas to memorize. English and writing classes were focused on forced structure (Intro has 4 sentences, ends in thesis, each body paragraph's topic sentence must relate back to thesis, if discussing multiple stories - Intro-ABAB-Conc. structure is preferred, 3 pages long, must integrate quotes from narrative, etc.) using forced literary techniques (rhetorical devices, and general "proposals" that tell you how to write and what to write) as a (forced) lens to study ancient works of narrative that no student cares about. Then the essay is assessed on how well it fits each forced mechanism, instead of well, being assessed on whether it's good writing or not. History was a series of events and dates to memorize and recall. Natural sciences varied : HS physics was a lot like HS math, HS biology a lot like HS history, HS chemistry some mixture (zing!) of both, mostly the latter. You might notice a pattern (pattern-finding being a very valuable trait NOT taught in HS courses, because who needs patterns when you can just memorize each individual event in the textbook?) : a focus on memorization over analysis, a focus on pre-set structure over creativity.
At least Computer Science was all right. But that's only because I was lucky enough that my school's CS department was large enough to afford to be taught by some seriously smart people truly dedicated to both the study of computer science and the art of pedagogy, but small enough such that the principal let the CS dept operate as it wants without interfering with the College Board's awful way of treating every subject. Part of a course (AP Comp Sci A) absolutely required you to at least dip your toes into the College Board's bullshit, and skimming over the Barron's book/taking the actual test, it seemed like the College Board had planned a lot of tedious stuff like Java/Java's standard library details, manual loop evaluations, and that infuriating GridWorld bullshit (a complicated, but still incredibly awful simulation program; the test assesses your knowledge of GridWorld's actor types and which Bug goes which way rather than assessing ... computer science, which is honestly what I fucking signed up for). The stuff in my school's course that really intrigued me and got my mind jogging (working through sorting algorithms, data structures, and big O analysis on your own after you've been taught the absolute basics) was the stuff they cut out of the AP Computer Science AB program, which was an earlier program that was deemed too difficult, I guess. As if the College Board was intentionally avoiding stuff that required analysis or actual thought.
At least Computer Science was all right. But that's only because I was lucky enough that my school's CS department was large enough to afford to be taught by some seriously smart people truly dedicated to both the study of computer science and the art of pedagogy, but small enough such that the principal let the CS dept operate as it wants without interfering with the College Board's awful way of treating every subject. Part of a course (AP Comp Sci A) absolutely required you to at least dip your toes into the College Board's bullshit, and skimming over the Barron's book/taking the actual test, it seemed like the College Board had planned a lot of tedious stuff like Java/Java's standard library details, manual loop evaluations, and that infuriating GridWorld bullshit (a complicated, but still incredibly awful simulation program; the test assesses your knowledge of GridWorld's actor types and which Bug goes which way rather than assessing ... computer science, which is honestly what I fucking signed up for). The stuff in my school's course that really intrigued me and got my mind jogging (working through sorting algorithms, data structures, and big O analysis on your own after you've been taught the absolute basics) was the stuff they cut out of the AP Computer Science AB program, which was an earlier program that was deemed too difficult, I guess. As if the College Board was intentionally avoiding stuff that required analysis or actual thought.