As it is crunch time in academia land, I am surrounded by people struggling to meet their ambitions/obligations in the face of the hard deadlines. I have to admit that there are times in the year when being a student isn’t very demanding: flexible hours, freedom to cut corners, and creative opportunities abound. But these are broken up by periods of overdrive, when finding places to nap in the lab or library seems more reasonable than going home or eating. This rollercoaster effort creates difficult demands on our willpower, to say the least. Which makes me wonder: are the people drawn to academia particularly suited for this kind of exertion oscillation, or are they just living with it for the sake of the other benifits?
Come to think of it, how am I to know if this is normal or abnormal career investment? Is school harder than most peoples work?
The answer is probably that it depends on what and who, but either way, here’s to hoping that the work is worth doing.
Finn Upham 
School is easier than work.
without exception?
The more I think about it, the more the question seems ill posed. School, work and hard are widely interpretable.
There is a lot of work that is harder than most school. The purpose of school allows it sensitive to the needs of the student, compared to the purpose of many types of work. But a lot of people find school very hard and discouraging and are happier in other forms of employment accessible to them.
but I agree that you can hardly compare the privilege of studying stuff like “music technology” to most forms of work, even if the academic stress cycle contains marked extremes.