I am and always have been possessed by a fascination with language, and was predisposed to take Russian. That said, I do not think there is any language quite so beautiful as Russian.  

Grammar has largely disappeared in US education. There are rudimentary brushes with the stuff, how to discern a pronoun, what's a verb, can you find any adjectives here, fifteen minutes a day devoted to it for perhaps a week of the third grade. The result is a student body that is, on the whole, unaware of the workings of their own language. Taking Russian forces the student to learn not only the grammar of the foreign language, but also to learn, or rediscover, the grammar of English. I had little grammar in elementary school; mostly I learnt it at home, talking with my parents and older siblings. Even so, I hadn't nearly the sort of exposure to it I now wish I had. Fortunately, studying foreign languages have helped me to make up, in large part, my grammatical deficiencies. Spanish introduced me to the subject, middle, predicate idea (not entirely applicable to Russian word order); Russian taught me what should be the very basics of English grammar. The rules of Russian grammar, in short, forced me to locate the English equivalents (or approximate equivalents). It was never any problem for me to listen to a sentence in either English or Russian, and know how it should sound; but having endured rigorous training in Russian grammar, I began to understand the whys and wherefores.

Having been introduced to the fundamentals of grammar, I explored its more advanced elements, a path which has led me to explore, most recently, the ins and outs of rhetoric (that is, rhetorical terms and methods). An acquaintance of mine, listening to me wax poetic about Russian grammar, rudely interrupted me and asked, a bit sourly, why it was that Russian majors talked about grammar all the time. That proves it to me. Grammar is so out of place in American primary and secondary schools that it is unusual to hear it discussed at all.   

Studying Russian will make you into a better student. The schedule demands you employ a system of study that quickly becomes a habit. I cannot say that I saw a dramatic improvement in my grades, as I received high marks even before I began Russian. I do believe, however, that in the process of learning Russian, I became more adept at studying English: I began to see into, as it were, the language of the varied texts I studied, noting the reuse of words containing certain roots, roots which related directly to certain themes; I understood patterns and rhythm better. Russian enhanced my ability to read and to communicate.