American also born to an education-focused set of parents.
I've been out of school well over a decade and still have those nightmares. Usually correlates with work-stress for me now, but at least once or twice a year I wake up terrified out of a dream where I'm walking around my highschool (always highschool, never college, oddly, despite my college courses being MUCH harder; I think because the artificial stakes and utter lack of autonomy) trying to find the classroom for some test I didn't realize I had.
I had this same conversation with my wife recently as well. It still blows me away that I'm hard pressed to think of situations where I felt as stressed/panicked as I was in parts of highschool, and I've not shirked challenges by any means. I both respect and would not want to be a kid growing up nowadays.
I've been out of school well over a decade and still have those nightmares. Usually correlates with work-stress for me now, but at least once or twice a year I wake up terrified out of a dream where I'm walking around my highschool (always highschool, never college, oddly, despite my college courses being MUCH harder; I think because the artificial stakes and utter lack of autonomy) trying to find the classroom for some test I didn't realize I had.
I had this same conversation with my wife recently as well. It still blows me away that I'm hard pressed to think of situations where I felt as stressed/panicked as I was in parts of highschool, and I've not shirked challenges by any means. I both respect and would not want to be a kid growing up nowadays.