High School Ruined my Creativity

As a student about to entire my last year of high school, I can sufficiently say I'm at my wit's end.


If you ever want your life, your creativity and your individuality sucked straight out of you, attend high school. At this point in my school career, I have little to no drive to want to write about anything, or paint anything, or do anything, and I have a feeling there are many students who will agree with me.
As a child, I was full of life and creativity and spark. I can remember creating websites, writing my own news articles, writing chapter books, short stories, poems, etc. Those things excited me and I was always doing something new and fun. This continued with me through primary and elementary, but came to an abrupt stop as I entered high school. Where I live, high school is the 10th, 11th and 12th years of schooling. As I entered these years, everything I loved to do, I stopped doing, for numerous reasons:

1. It's uncool. This one is most obvious. Others my age are cruel and judgemental, it's a well know fact. If you're writing books instead of going to parties, you are lame and you cannot have friends. Fact.

2. This one is my whole point of this rant. The entire high school curriculum does nothing but suck the creativity and life out of any and every student. This is not an exaggeration, my friends. I'm having trouble finding the words to express how TRUE my feelings are, because as a high school student, I do not get taught that. I do not learn anything from reading books that I have not chosen to read, or only ever writing a narrative essay. The only thing the English curriculum does for me, is teach me that English sucks. And that's not true whatsoever, but it's hard for a 17 year old, like myself, to believe that when all I do is read a book and answer questions on it. Where is the poetry? Why do we learn so little about English? Why do we study Shakespeare, but no other famous, important writers in history? I want to write about things that matter. I want to be excited about going to English class. I want to learn about all genres, all types of writing, all types of creative outlets. I don't want to learn about what 'theme' is. I was taught that in the seventh grade; the definition has not changed. How can a student express themselves if we're all writing the same essay on the same book? How can we be taught that we are excellent writers, if we've only been given one type of writing to try and perfect? Maybe person A cannot write a comparative essay, but their poetry is breathtaking. Maybe person B loves to read, but just CANNOT read another Shakespeare play, because it doesn't interest them.

As someone who was once full of creativity and loved to write, I don't have much of a desire for it anymore. I no longer no how to write, because if it isn't a book report or a research essay, I don't know what I'm doing anymore. Am I an excellent writer? Am I a poor writer? I'm unable to tell. However, my conventions and mechanics are good and I know how to spell correctly, and I know how to follow the directions on how to write an essay, so in the eyes of my English teacher I can write.