College was like a vacation afterward. People mostly don't do a bunch of stupid, mean, disruptive bullshit, and if they do you're not expected to just put up with it? 15ish hours in class and you can arrange your schedule for a mix of hard and easy classes to come out way under the ~45-50hrs/wk of in-class and homework/study time of high school, plus you can usually figure a way not to have to get up before the fucking sun at least 2-3 days of the week, if not all of them? If you need to whizz you just... go? If you are sick or just need a mental health day you just send an email or three and rest, and it may mean a little more work later but no-one busts your balls over it as long as you don't do it too much? What is this, paradise?
It was shocking how much less stressful it was. It truly kinda messed me up for a while, just not understanding how to function outside the pressure-cooker of high school. The socialization there had almost nothing to do with how adults relate to one another in the real world, and the constantly high social stress levels, tight and absolute control by adults, and inability to make any reasonable or ordinary effort to get out of that plainly-very-bad situation, were insane compared to most of the "adult" world.
No wonder so many teens are depressed. School is really awful. Like, structurally so. In the best case. The first few months with a newborn, but after you've gone back to work so are trying to do both things, approach but are not quite as stressful, overall, as high school, in the typical case. I'm not kidding.
I am also a middle aged guy with a couple of kids, and I think raising children is way more stressful than highschool ever was.
