For those who are extremely individualistic/ nonconformist and love art... please help me with my dilemma…?

Okay I definitely agree with you. I believe strongly in creativity and uniqueness but there's something you're forgetting about school. School is the only place where it is acceptable to be a dictatorship. In this case the principal is the dictator and the students are the people that have to follow mindlessly along. Fortunately there are the rare people like you that realize what a bunch of bull that is, but the matter of fact is that there is basically nothing that can change a dictator. Every student must follow these crazy conformist ideas. For the time being just go along with this madness and try to be as creative as possible in doing so. Don't worry though, when you go out into the "real world" you will soon find the people like you that dare to be different are the ones that will shine above the rest.