I had a quite bad experience with the schools in my country. I hated it and after 9th grade, I was thinking of dropping out of altogether. Eventually, I joined

I had a quite bad experience with the schools in my country. I hated it and after 9th grade, I was thinking of dropping out of altogether. Eventually, I joined a distance learning high-school in the US called "American School of Correspondence". That was my last attempt at school. These were the best 4 years of school. I went from being the worst in the class (by grades) to being one of the best in the school. A big difference between that school and others was that there was no memorization or note-taking. Before, good grades meant you had to be good at memorizing and recalling exactly. There was a lot of note-taking too. In the US HS, every single subject was self-contained, meaning that you could get the best grade without prior subject knowledge. Exams were meant to be completed with an open textbook. All that was dream come true for me.