Depends on the perspective, I guess. I was working in several different places, and sometimes I had hard time. Even working in the worst places, I felt better than in school.

I hated elementary school, because kids were cruel (some time I came back to home with chocking marks) and teachers decided to just not see bullying. Or decided to give me a hard time, too. When someone destroyed my textbook by writing on it while I was not at the desk, I got note to the parents because supposedly I told someone to do that.

I kinda liked liceum because finally people were more mature. But man, long term, it was very exhausting. The lesson schedule looked like it was set randomly. For example, in second class, being 16-17 yo, Thursdays I had lessons from 9 AM to 6 PM, and the next day I was starting at 7 AM. I was tired all the time and had no time for social interactions.

Please note that the following paragraph is not personal. It applies to the entire phenomenon. For me, it is annoying when grown-ups tell children that it is the best time in their life. When I was a kid, I felt fear a lot. As a teenager, I was depressed and tired all the time. And, you know, if it is the best time in my life, why should I care about my future at all? It is going to be terrible anyway...

Everyone has its own perspective. Maybe you had great time in school. Maybe for my mother, school years actually are the best years of her life. But telling young people that they are living the best time in their lives, and it will be only worse later, is... unfair.

When I have a particularly bad day as an adult, I often think back to being a child (or worse, teenager) in school forced to follow arbitrary rules by tired adults who were more interested in making sure nobody wore a baseball cap than keeping kids safe from anaphylactic allergic reactions.

When I think back to my school days and how anxious, stressed, unheard, and restricted I felt almost 100% of the time, I usually feel immediately better.

I remember being 16 in high school, and during the school day I couldn't just take a walk, because that would be truancy to skip class.

I couldn't just take a walk at night because our municipality instituted a curfew past I don't know, 10pm or something for those under 18, and a police car actively patrolled my neighborhood for violations.

I lived 18 years like that. Allowed to make no choices about where I went to school or at what time.

So now, as an adult, sometimes I just exit my apartment and walk down a city street when I feel like it, and it feels extremely empowering.

Taking a mental health day and not showing up to work, or better yet, handing in my resignation, also feel extremely empowering.

From my perspective, being a child sucked. I hated almost every moment of it, despite being reasonably popular in high school, having a close circle of friends, and never worrying about my grades.

Being an adult is amazing by comparison and I would never want to go back.

But I also understand that to some degree, that's a result of the freedom that comes with a high salary and an in-demand skillset that allow me to leave jobs and take days off with little risk. Many adults don't have that opportunity, and I totally understand how in some cases they could see their childhood as having been better due to a lack of responsibilities.

Maybe you mistook my perspective for hubris - but it is what childhood should be - innocent and pure and if it's not, then society is failing.

I did not take your post as a form of hubris. What I meant when I wrote about perspective is that personal experiences shape our assessment of reality. I agree that childhood should be innocent and pure. But sometimes, it is not.

I hated school. I hated the inadequacy of lesson - some were obviously way too easy for me, while others way too hard. The number of lesson hours per week per subject didn't align with my interests nor the difficulty of the subject. The amount of wasted time was staggering. For example, it so happened that I didn't attend high-school for half a year in my fourth semester. I had enough scores in some subjects to pass, but for a few I didn't, and was given a few weeks to prepare for oral exams. I managed to learn half a year worth of biology, history, and chemistry in 3 weeks, and passed the exams. It was a Pyrrhic victory - I passed to the next grade, but at the same time I realized that I'm wasting (6 months - a few weeks) each semester. I started questioning the meaning of going to school; I realized that I could learn faster on my own, then realized that I would have learned a whole lot more if I could learn with a mentor who'd have my best interests in mind. I also realized that no teacher has an interest in working with someone like me, and that the system is actively hostile to all the non-standard approaches and needs. By the next year, I was diagnosed with depression and missed the whole year while trying to come to grips with that harsh reality.

Later on, I was locked in a constant harassment from an English teacher (a second language here). I learned English in private lessons and on the Internet and I was good at it. That was unacceptable for her. I was to sit quietly in the corner and when I tried to participate in the lesson, I was branded her enemy. The unfair treatment was to the point where I barely graduated, yet I got 97% score on the matriculation exam. I had an urge to find her and throw the results in her face, but I knew I would never recover the lost time and expended psychological effort to persevere.

If I could do it all again, I would focus all I had on breaking out of the system. That system very obviously wasn't made for people like me, but I felt helpless, knowing there's no alternative. It was wrong. The alternatives are always there, even if deliberately hidden as to not "encourage abnormal behavior". I could have tried harder to get away from the system that damaged my health and gave me next to nothing in exchange. And if I couldn't find an alternative, I would have changed my attitude at least: look, Mr. teacher, you're being paid to teach me, and I'm not being paid to learn. So, Mr. teacher, act like I'm a paying customer, please. Because otherwise, Mr. teacher, I'll go through all possible means to fuck you up, cheerfully and as a hobby. Just as you've been doing to me all this time.

Once you actually live that experience, it (or versions of it) will haunt your nightmares for the rest of your life.

A more recurrent dream for me is finding myself in the backseat of an empty, moving car, able to reach the steering wheel, but unable to control the brakes.

I wonder what this means. It is unnerving.

Sometimes I'm alone in the car. Other times there is someone else in the front but they are incapacitated, or unwilling to bring the car back under control. I'm usually alone, though.

On a few occasions I was able to climb into the front seat, but of course then the brakes either did nothing or were so ineffectual that trying to use them to slow down only distracted me and made matters worse.

(1) do you have a feeling that you have control of your own life? Maybe it feels that you are in a prison where "your hand is forced" and you cannot take own decisions, have to play the bad hand you received

(2) are you doing something risky, like working in a failing start up? Or a company thay is going towards bankruptcy?

It really sucks lol

Here's one from the early 20th century: https://nautil.us/read-the-lost-dream-journal-of-the-man-who...

There were indeed dreaming of school:

> I am an assistant professor. Suddenly I receive express orders from the dean to teach osteology at the very last minute. Anxiety, anguish * * * when going over the bones in my memory. I enumerate those of the hand: scaphoids, capitate, and I did not know any more. Meanwhile the class awaits me, the students yell. I ask to myself how I will lecture about bones if I have almost forgotten them? Growing anguish and I awaken with a sense of well-being, upon realizing that I am not a professor, I am old and no one is directing me.

I have no idea where that dream came from or why I had it. I have never had a "didn't study" dream before, university was a relatively stress free time for me compared to my earlier years

I guess I'm brimming with enough (over)confidence to avoid the "didn't study" dreams or the "sitting in the back seat of an empty car" dreams, but I occasionally dream I signed up for some class and then didn't bother to attend it, wasting my time and snubbing the teacher.. "ah shoot, sorry guys"

This one is a recurring dream for me and sometimes the context is middle or high school which makes even less sense.

That never happened, but I did drop a couple classes before the withdrawal deadline to fix the workload. It feels so real though.

Or I don’t have a HS diploma even though I graduated college and have had a job for 20 years.

You earned your degree, and your subconscious needs to needs to acknowledge it.

Why would you be drug down by this question? Perhaps there is a deeper reason.

“Dig deep within yourself, for there is a fountain of goodness ever ready. Dig deep, and it will ever flow." -Marcus Aurelius

I had to leave school to learn, and now that I’m a computer programmer, I feel apprehension that I might have to go back to school to four years to pretend to learn topics I learned independently just to assuage the school systems ego enough that they will give me an accreditation. The idea of going back to school makes me tense up at this point. Adulthood is so much less traumatizing because it feels like you have so much more choice to avoid abuse, and you can choose to confront abusive situations on your own schedule. You’re valued for so many more reasons than your ability to tolerate abuse and produce good test scores.

Because my high school Biology course (A Levels in the UK) was divided into modules assessed throughout two years I came to the last exam pretty sure that I didn't have to score many marks to get the grade I was aiming for.

I ended up in a weird situation where my instinct was to prepare really well but, in practice, I should skimp on revision for Biology and concentrate on subjects that weighted the end-of-year exams higher.

The strategy worked out - I hit what I was aiming for in Biology and in the other subjects. But that whole very tactical approach so went against my character that, to this day, anxiety dreams manifest about not having done the work for that specific exam. Often they're further exaggerated (e.g. I've simply forgotten to go to any lessons all year, etc) but it focuses around that event.

I find it weird that my subconscious prefers that over arguably even more stressful (and sometimes less successful!) exams at university. Maybe I was just more equipped to deal with it by then.

I get these exact nightmares. I wonder how common is this.

My friend called me as I was about to go to the gym and asked where I was, with a very concerned voice. It turned out that I was supposed to be at an exam. I rushed home, changed clothes and went like crazy to school. Luckily they let me in as the last one of the day - of course I had not prepared in the slightest - but did absolutely fine :)

School is supposedly the best experience in life, and simultaneously the most frequent source of nightmares decades later. What a curious coincidence!