I will admit that I could’ve added a more of, “but life does get a lot better when you’re the one making choices.” But honestly I think, in the near-dystopian society we labor through, that the boredom of school can be a helpful preparation for the monotony of entry-level work.

I’m trying to commiserate on some level. Life can be hard, I’m not going to lie about that. I dealt with my share of crushing depression in my 20s. But for many it is worth it, and education can help it be less difficult in the long run.

I guess the point I should be trying to make is that finding ways to actively engage with things that aren’t your preferred activity is a vital skill for enjoying life. School becomes less monotonous when you make an effort to enjoy it, not when you rely on your teachers for that and spend your time pining for your dopamine source. The same is true for shitty work. Embracing it and finding ways to keep your mind engaged can make terrible work far better. It’s how I survived years of working fast food, retail, and call centers until I finally got a job I truly enjoy in software.

And of course this carries throughout personal lives as well. Being able to put down the keyboard/controller/phone and clean the house is a necessity, one I still struggle with.

The lack of an ability to affect change because stubborn goons with more power than them assume they know how things should be done.

Yeah but this is, maddeningly, pretty much the way life is.

By the way, the point here isn’t that it would be bad if teachers could make school more engaging than YouTube and TikTok, but rather that it’s impossible for the average teacher to make school more engaging than a student’s phone. So get used to it. Required activities will never consistently outperform entertainment, at any point in your life.

This isn’t meant to be doom and gloom. It’s meant to be honest. Learn to love life, because life won’t always make loving it easy. But it will be worth it, at least in my experience.