I started university in 2004, and I did not party. My university coursework was no harder than my high school coursework, outside of a couple of weed-out classe

I started university in 2004, and I did not party. My university coursework was no harder than my high school coursework, outside of a couple of weed-out classes (like organic chemistry) -- but those were graded on a curve, so they FELT difficult, but in practice weren't hard to pass at all because we were being graded against the students who were there to party and missed the fundamentals that everything else was built on. I suspect that your partying made the coursework seem a lot more difficult that it really was.