I had excellent grades all my life, I took every extra activity since middle school, started working early, long shift, extra hours, studying at night, degree in engineering, extra courses in order to be excellent.
Now in my late 20s I understand all of this was not worth. All this effort lead me to nothing of what I expected as a young teen. I'm not satisfied, I don't have an healthy work-life balance, I'm not successful, I'm not even middle class.
I'm debt free, many people told me this is a great accomplishment, I have demanded skills, but what more?
After all this effort I still have less purchase power of my grandpa that was an unskilled worker who didn't do a single extra shift in his entire life and that didn't even started secondary education.
He bought a nice house, started a family, enjoyed his time. He wasn't required all that knowledge and competence to reach a nice balance. The high effort was required for the ambitious who wanted a top tier job, not for everyone who just want to go on.
Now even doing so much, is still so bad. I sacrificed hours and hours studying and learning, but how much these things improved my life?
I feel like I wasted so much time, I should have partied and traveled more.
How bad have life-quality and economy gone? How can we allow this? How can we still tell children “yeah, take a huge college debt, go to this prestigious university” while even when you graduate as a top level student, still you will gain just the minimum for go on?