I hated school from the first day of preschool all the way through to graduation from college. There was not a single day that I actually enjoyed being there in

I hated school from the first day of preschool all the way through to graduation from college. There was not a single day that I actually enjoyed being there in the nearly 2 decades of its presence in my life. Jay, GingerJumble, I feel your pain. I cannot offer advice, other than to tell you there are those of us out here in the real world who endured anyway and succeeded despite hating it. School instilled in me a deep distrust of authority and institutions, but fortunately I had a few great, smart teachers. I liked Latin. The subject was fun, but the teacher was amazing. Same with 11th grade English. AP English was phenomenal, and introduced me to Jorge Luis Borges, among others. I skated by, doing the minimum necessary to graduate and get into a decent, but not top, college. These things are all true in my experience: 1) Degrees are widely considered tantamount to intellect and accomplishment, and they are not. Sometimes otherwise cool and empathetic people are unable to distinguish between degrees and intellect, especially if they have lots of degrees. 2) Better schools are generally more endurable. Bad schools should be shut down, or at least, students such as yourself should be able to attend an alternative. Or better: one should be able to be awarded a degree purely by demonstrating competency via exam. 3) Success in school is not the only thing, but it does measure something important. If you decide to leave school (even just mentally check out), create and implement a detailed plan to demonstrate or create value for society. If you think you're miserable in a bad school now, wait until you drop out and must - oh - wipe asses or slaughter pigs for subsistence wages in order to live. Nothing wrong with those jobs, but you obviously have a creative, active mind, and those jobs will not enable you to exercise it.