I will never get this. School was a miserable experience for me. I did really well but hated every moment. And pretty much everybody I went to school with hated the experience as well. Even disregarding the unusually horrible teachers I had*, the overall school experience still sucked.
But everybody seemed to forget immediately how bad it was—sometimes even on the day of graduation, just before they went to college.
It’s like watching people cognitively spin on a dime. One moment they are complaining about how miserable it is, the next they are filled with nostalgia for ‘an amazing experience’.
It’s almost as if school is a right of passage wholly unconcerned with improving the lives of those participating in it or something.
*: I had at least five teachers who were genuinely evil people and seemed to thrive on the misery of children.