I had a rather "terrible" public school social experience (like I'm sure many of the people in our field did, unfortunately, if I may be assumptive) which also

I had a rather "terrible" public school social experience (like I'm sure many of the people in our field did, unfortunately, if I may be assumptive) which also failed to teach me much of anything of value. Even with all that time spun out for very little, I mark it as less of a waste than kindergarten, elementary, and middle school. Highschool _forces_ you to some extent to play the social game, if only to survive it; in either case you start to understand the true nature of people far more personally. These are all very important insights, IMO, and have served me well post-factum, both in college and in industry. I think the other posts in these comments indicate the "highschool" in both of those scenarios quite well. (And to address why I think the prior schoolings are so vapid, all of the lockstep progression through "tasks", gameable metrics, and the sheer environment that felt more like a babysitter than a place of learning removed both any natural drive to learn 'interesting' material AND any opportunity for social growth.)