Does your school do work experience placements?
We had it in Year 10. I ended up doing two weeks in the graphic design area of an engineering firm, which was pretty cool. I had no appropriate formal clothes to wear, so felt a bit out of place at first haha, but it was an interesting experience in the end. I think it probably helped with some of my design-related subjects in Year 11/12.
In the end, I was pretty happy to get back to regular school, though, because the days felt much longer (I guess they weren't broken up into different periods, which probably made the difference).
How about you?