Learning to make my way through school

My education, early on in school I discovered that I could stand out through my art, that's where I was special, however schools are not set up to service the needs of such children so I suffered through spelling tests and learning times tables...learning that if I wrote them down on tiny pieces of paper I could cheat, terrible I know but I just couldn't understand the importance of being able to chime off like a robot my times tables. Spelling I learned later through chatting online, although it's something I have had to learn to over come and get over, finding that despite what topics my essays and stories were about the only thing teachers had to say about them was 'incorrect spellings'

Arts, yes I was lucky in some respects, as some teachers I had could see that I had skill and would encourage me to create things, I could always be found raiding the craft bins for materials.
The problems came later in secondary school when everything is a lot more structured, I would excel in any and all craft projects but lose out in the more academic sides. I am however a person who can adapt and I did learn over time how to get around these problems. I guess in a way sometimes in life you have to learn to be an actor, learning the script and very little more, just enough to pass.
Thinking about it all now, I did well at school, I got good grades, however I realise that we are taught to repeat a script not to understand it.
The last two years were all about 'past papers' where we weren't really taught anything new, we were made to repeat past tests and taught to fill in the blanks.
Like crosswords you read a question and fill in the blanks, at school you are taught what to fill the blanks with but not what the question means.

2 Down: You take part in ______ in order to learn to pretend to know something.

When I was at school all we had were the old Acorn computers, very very early on I have had an interest in computers, introduced to them by my parents, the old Spectrum, finding it amazing to be able to interact with images on a screen. Using computers at school I loved but never felt like we did that enough, it wasn't until I was in secondary School and managed to get on to the new Windows computer in the art room that I learned that it was possible to use these to create artwork. I would go in every break and use Paint (and solitaire of course) amazed at the new machines only beginning to grasp their potential, here was a new tool I could use to overcome my problems at school such as spelling and grammar, I was in fact the first person in my class maybe even my school to submit course work typed up on a computer, (the following week the teacher moved us all in to the new computer room to do newspapers) which gained me a whole new level of respect from my English teacher and I think was the only reason I ended up passing that class, I was being noticed for other reasons than bad spelling.
I guess I was attracted to computers for a few reasons, I was already feeling different to other people in my class, while they were all going on and on about boyfriends and the latest episodes of Neighbours, both of which I found I had no interest in, I was discovering the possibilities of computers and the information it could provide.
And discovering just how different I was to other people in my class.