I took three years of Spanish and got an A every semester. Even when it was still fresh in my mind, I was nowhere near able to hold even a very simple conversation. And now just a few years later it's all totally gone from my brain.
My mother's native language is Spanish and she never taught me, which I resent her for. But I still find it incredible how shitty my public school education in Spanish was. We really should be teaching kids a second language from kindergarten up.
Spanish 1 we had a great teacher. He couldn't avoid the boring constant conjugation, but he added a cultural element that was great. We got to make some clay pots, he taught us to make chorizo and eggs, took us to the local mission. Then spanish 2 we got Ben Stein from Fastimes. Had better luck in college, aside from the fucking gusano who lectured me for an hour in english because I brought up the terrorist attack that killed the Cuban fencing team. After that, the whole class hated me.