There is this oft-repeated idea in modern culture: do what you love, and love what you do. But how do you find your passion? How does a person know what to aim for in life? I think it is the extra curricular activities that you do which determine if you'd find your passion. All the time that you spend in tinkering with stuff, reading books, playing games, hanging out with friends after school is the time you could find that. It is true that those passions change with age, but with any luck and a good teacher / parent) those passions could become your vocations. I remember the intial scene of the movie 'Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron' and realize that childhood is that time when we are free to experiment, unfettered by society's rules.

Schools teach us how to be disciplined and work hard, but a creative and a critical mind requires more to survive. It requires an atmosphere of similar kind of people, a place to keep on practicing its creativity.