I’m sure if I’d have gone with my ideas and believed in them more I’d have done much better, and more importantly I would’ve actually enjoyed myself. I think the most important aspect of any artistic work is that it comes from you. If you want to draw a tree, it’ll turn out a million times better than a tree that you’re told to draw. Every time.
Education is the last place where you pretty much don’t have to give a fuck about what you’re supposed to do. As soon as you get into the “real world” you’ll have a hundred different people telling you to draw a hundred different trees. But whenever you make the time to draw that one tree that is because you want to you’ll notice the difference.