I was actually taught to write the "double-storey" 'a' (but not the 'g', although I later taught myself to do it in order to reduce ambiguity), so I suspect it could largely be something regional. I was also taught to write serifs and slash zeros, which felt unnecessary at first but it definitely helps readability, especially with letters like 1Il.

I've also received comments that my writing looks like an actual font, so I tried finding one on the font identification sites, but none of them are really a close match; a good description of it would be "calligraphic version of Times New Roman".