Did you happen to attend a prestigious school? I find that the level of rigor (and corresponding freedom) varies tremendously from program to program. I did my

Did you happen to attend a prestigious school? I find that the level of rigor (and corresponding freedom) varies tremendously from program to program. I did my undergrad at a state school with a middling engineering program, where I had ample free time to explore topics in depth, pursue extracurriculars that taught me far more than my classes, and have a thriving social life. Contrast that experience to what I saw as a teaching assistant at Georgia Tech: undergrads who are so full of classwork that they're punting on the least-valuable graded assignments, never mind extracurriculars. The level of rigor in courses is much higher, but it presses out freedom to explore independently. Another datapoint: I competed against GT extracurricular teams during my undergrad years, and we beat them handily almost every time because their students couldn't justify high effort for work that wasn't graded. I once saw a GT team arrive a day late to a competition, work on a robot for three hours at the adjacent table, realize their robot did not work, and drive home without competing.