I remember spending significant effort on a creative essay in highschool. I had been a high performance, motivated student who was willing to jump through every hoop and do the work.
My english teacher took the essay, gave it a C.
I asked them for clarification about the logic of how they gave me the grade. They simply couldn't answer. There was no explanation. It seemed to me that they just picked a random grade out of a hat and couldn't explain why (probably more than likely).
My teacher blew up and accused me of "grade grubbing."
At that point I realized that the grading criteria was arbitrary, probably based on how they felt and if they like you personally and decided that school didn't matter since there was no actual standard for grading.
I never recovered my ability to care about school and stropped trying.
My reasoning was: "Well...if I try really hard and do all the work, they will give me a random grade based on how they feel anyways so this is a waste of time."
It was entirely a disagreement and disrespect for institutional authority.
Likewise, I have had constant struggles with VPs and Directors and CEOs I have worked with, challenging them on their behavior and lack of analysis, strategy, deep thinking.
Pretty much I need to work for myself, it is usually only a matter of time.
God help you if you try to tell me what to do from an authority position and I don't agree with your plan. I just start fighting with people, can't stand it.
My experience was I worked really hard to write an english paper in school. My teacher gave it a C or a B- or something. I asked him why and he was unable to answer and threw a tantrum of sorts about it and proceeded to accuse me of grade grubbing.
After that, I realized education contained highly arbitrary, personality driven decisions and completely lost interest in working hard for school ever again.
The discovery that grading systems, in general, are not "fair" in that they don't seem to actually adhere to logical criteria ended my interest in school. I concluded that what was being graded was actually your likability to teachers. Being unlikable, that was a losing game for me :) So I mentally checked out.