Well, learning other languages apparently makes your brain more flexible, but I share your frustration about how they're formally taught in highschool, at least versus the much more interesting ways of learning languages which are living amongst the natives or "absorbing" a language from hearing it on TV because you already know a similar language.

I remember being taught Dutch formally when I moved to the Netherlands and almost none of it stuck, but some years later I ended up working for a small company were everybody but me was Dutch and they would just have all the meetings in Dutch (not with a bad intention, IMHO - always thought it was partly to help me learn it) and a mere 3 months later my Dutch was pretty decent. Being thrown in at the deep end is stressing but you learn fast and it's never boring.

Ha. My Spanish is the opposite, I can name everything around me but can't talk. Was in a sub shop in Miami once and the sandwich maker didn't speak English, I didn't even KNOW I knew the words for all those foods but quickly rattled off Mayonesa, Queso, Lechuga, Cebolla, Acetunas, Pimientos - everything I looked at I thought the Spanish word not the English word, it was all there in my head, what the fuck? But try to say I did something, instead of im doing something or going to do something? Total blank, I have to really think on it like it's a puzzle.