Is High School Harder Than the Real World?

The lockdown aspect of HS was a drag. Sports, partying and growing up in HS was awesome. College is a 1000 times better and then when it's time to work for 20-30 years, you have to find something you like to do and get paid to do it. Feeding yourself and your family and paying the bills is harder than anything you'll will see in HS, but you'll get there. Keep it + and stay happy.

Well considering I teach in a high school, I would say it absolutely depends on who you are and where you go to school. I’m on that same schedule, got about 2 hours per school day that I’m home and not working on something.

Unless you change your attitude everything is going to be hard.

Sham 69 wrote:

- Repeat

- And you do just enough to finish the work, but not to understand it because you're worried about the next assignment

I bet college will make high school look like a joke. The real world jobs can't be as stupid as high school, can it?

This sounds like bad life advice slapped on a bumper-sticker, but, at 62, I’m telling you it is totally true: “Right here and right now is all there ever was and all there ever will be”. Getting that….is remarkably liberating.

mr turtlez wrote:

Unless you change your attitude everything is going to be hard.

The chicks dig that.

College is sometimes harder, sometimes easier.

I would agree that school is harder than say your first 4 years in the working world depending on your industry.

But once you add kids and mortgage and expensive bills etc, life becomes harder.

Sham 69 wrote:

I bet college will make high school look like a joke. The real world jobs can't be as stupid as high school, can it?

Oh yeah, it can.

Its mostly different. A lot depends on whether you make good decisions and invest in your future. You have a lot more freedom after high school and this can make your life a lot better or worse: your career path, who you spend your time with, where you live, how you manage money are all choices you have. If you make choices with align with whats good for you, life is much much better after high school. There are lots of folks who don't do that and remember high school as the best years of their lives. Easy choices hard life, hard choices easy life.

Bad job, few friends, poor spouse, live far from work, stressed about money, body falling apart then your life is worse than high school.

Good job, peers you enjoy hanging out with, good spouse, short commute, disposable income, in shape then your life is better than high school.

There are parts of life which are flat out harder than high school, e.g. taking care of a dying parent, having a newborn (super worth it though). Entrepreneurship is harder than high school too. Some of the complaints in your post don't go away, but there are ways to minimize it.

High school was a breeze compared with college. The college I attended was an elite school (median SAT>1450) and I had to work 70 hours a week just to scrape into the top third of my class. I was astounded by the work ethic of my peers, many of whom took this lifestyle for granted and were totally comfortable working all day Saturday and all day Sunday week after week. The students at the very top worked even longer hours than I did. One of my suitemates kept to a strict 5-hour sleep schedule (11:00 PM-4:00 AM) every single day of her life, even on days off, just so that she never "de-trained" from the schedule she felt necessary to perform. I watched my girlfriend (now wife) work for 48 hours straight once on an important paper, leaving her computer only to go to the bathroom. I had to bring her food and water. The level of focus in the top students was otherworldly.

In comparison, work in the "real world" is pretty easy (like high school), except for the five years after having kids. The work/life schedule during those years was even more intense than college. To give you a sense, during the most difficult year, my wife asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I told her I wanted 15 minutes to read to myself. That was literally all I thought I could spare from our work/childcare duties, without the threat of getting buried under undone household chores. We had to be "on" 100% of the time. It's almost impossible to understand without actually going through it.

High school is easy and fun.

If you don’t like an extracurricular activity don’t do it. They’re all supposed to be fun. If they’re not, then stop.

The work is easy. You see your friends constantly. Constantly learning new things is great.

The one thing is that developmentally it’s harder for teenagers to wake up early than adults due to where they are in brain development. Early mornings suck for teens, that’s just a biological fact.

But other than that please try to enjoy this time in your life where you surrounded by friends. You only have a couple years of that remaining, it stops after college.

not hard, just time consuming wrote:

High school isn't harder than the real world, but it is more time consuming. I had more free time in med school than I had in high school.

1) I don't believe you.

2) I hope you are never my doctor.

I am an old retired guy so I have seniority and more life knowledge than most posters here.

I think you are right, particularly if you have high academic goals. The schedule is busy, the emotional maturity to handle it all isn't developed yet and the social pressures are the toughest.

The only thing is failure as an adult is more devastating because so many others depend on you. But success as an adult beats anything from high school.

I was a statistical outlier in the city I grew up in. To put it simply both of my parents were real f***heads. They lived like pigs, cupboards stuffed with candy and junk food. They argued non-stop. Not to mention both had a very hands on approach to their obsfucated version of parenting that carried over but also ended during my high school years because I grew to be stronger than my dad. The dinner table was otherwise usually comparable to a warzone. They were pack rats and so I had a room of my own but wasnt allowed to use the closet (because it was stuffed with their things) and I usually had to trip over their things (vaccuum cleaner, bags, boxes) to get to my bed.

I found it extraordinarily difficult to concentrate and do homework at this home which when you are 14 or 15 makes it difficult to succeed because there are only so many other places you could go. I essentially 1) ran, 2) worked and 3) frequented the public library next to my school.

Running became my escape. I survived finishing in the top 14% of my class where the first 9% were 4.0s on a 4-point scale.

College was easier for me because I had more control over the cleanliness of my living corridors. I am one of those people who cant concentrate unless my workspace is clean and other basic chores are complete.

It depends... wrote:

I am one of those people who cant concentrate unless my workspace is clean and other basic chores are complete.

Same. I always have to shower and clean my bedroom before I do homework.

Ah did you see her the Saxon valedictorian

Those sweet days of our youth and coming of age

For me, yes.

Sounds like you need a dad to talk to.

Take high school but pretend you have to thank your parents constantly for paying for it or having to take out a loan you'll be paying back for years.

Imagine all the freaks and jerks you're insulated from right now and a couple dozen of them are in your dorm. You will encounter freshmen who are seasoned drug users and have had multiple STDs.

You'll get to see Young Republicans practicing the stealing of student elections that will serve them will after college.

High school is where you meet real people for the first time. It's a shock some never recover from.