see the thing is that a lot of my opinions on The Education System are founded on the basis of my having had generally something close to the best version of the thing it was possible for me to have received, and done Very Well at it by all objective measures*, and simultaneously spending a lot of time as a child and, later, a teenager desperately projecting onto fictional child soldiers and half-wishing that i was one of them because maybe it would be objectively worse but at least other people would understand that it was bad

this remains an incredibly difficult topic for me to talk about directly, for multiple reasons, so instead i'm going to write a bunch of fanfiction about itachi from naruto and hope you get it

*one of the reasons this is a difficult subject for me to talk about is i always feel i have to quantify precisely what i mean by "having done well academically", but simultaneously, i have a rock-hard gut-level conviction that talking about my academic achievements with any specificity will result in everyone dismissing anything negative i have to say about school, and most likely also Thinking Worse Of Me For Bragging. so you will just have to imagine my maxed-out standardized test scores!! sorry!!