I had a very permissive highschool experience (nonetheless academically rigorous) so it was a complete system shock to be dropped into a university system which

I had a very permissive highschool experience (nonetheless academically rigorous) so it was a complete system shock to be dropped into a university system which infantilised every step and process - it was like being back in middle school except I expected autonomy and to be held accountable for my (lack of) actions / knowledge / learning. And don't get me started on the administration which felt its need to weasel into every crevice, only to add unnecessary complexity and difficulty to otherwise simple processes (need to swap exam days with another student? - well, be prepared to start discussing it with admin months in advance with prepared letters from all stakeholders). Seemingly university administration only exists for the sake of having a university administration - and seems to be populated with the utter dregs of what that university put out that the market wouldn't hire (in other words: admin is where you go when you're too far up your own ass for a real business to get value from you). As a result, after a while most classmates didn't or couldn't think for themselves about anything. It was overall an extremely frustrating experience and I couldn't get out fast enough. I actually landed in hot water because I skipped too many classes (in my last year I only went to uni about 5 times, each for 1 of my 5 exams) but my grades were so much higher than the rest of the cohort they decided to allow me to graduate so as to improve their overall GPA for the class.