I always found the assertions that high school would be "the best years of your life" depressing. Thankfully, that has been far from the truth.
I've always felt this is why the teen suicide rate is so high. If you really believe these are the best years of your life, then what's the point of going any further?
I had a miserable time in high school, for the most part. I was a social outcast until my senior year, when at least that got better -- I was no social butterfly at that point, but I had friends in every group and people had mostly stopped bullying me. Of course, friends in every group is also a problem, because none of your friends actually like each other and it's hard to hang out with more than a couple at a time.
I think it would really have helped me if they had told me my freshman year that I was 11th in my class. I didn't find that out until a couple years later, after I had already demolished that with a lot of slacking off and ditching.
Acceleration would have been wonderful, although I really could have used it back in elementary and then god knows how bad it might have been by high school. Being even faintly challenged would have been useful, and might have given me some kind of a work ethic.
