I wouldn't have known how much I enjoy some of those things. Let's stick with literary analysis - I hated doing that in school, really hated it. It was a slog to get through. Until I one day read something I enjoy, and started feeling the things I learned to analyze. Suddenly the text wasn't just a text, it was a conversation with the author. It made me engage with reading on a different level, and also taught me to utilize the same techniques in my own writing.

But I know myself well enough to know that I wouldn't have been able to force myself to learn that stuff on my own. Writing literary analyses and having them read, critiqued and graded by my teachers was essential to learning it. Yet I would have gone on thinking that it's a waste of my time, had I not been forced to learn it.