Thankfully there is often a pretty big difference between studying and working.

I found there to be a level of stress in my studies that I never had a problem with later. An idea that any moment not spent pouring over books was contributing, at least in my mind, to inevitable failure; doubly so with exams looming ahead.

For me finishing my engineering degree was such a massive relief and work is so much better. I’m in anon’s boat.

Yeah it is kind of dumb that you can turn from being non-profit to for-profit if it turns out you’ve struck gold. Cheapens the value of non-profits everywhere if they can turn that around whenever they feel like it.

In Skyrim the main quest constantly tells you about how urgent it is for you to do the next steps. You must heed the summoning of the greybeards, you must hurry along to the dragon graveyard. Time is constantly of the essence.

And then every other part of the game encourages you to goof around.

Oblivion is the same with this. Morrowind went the opposite direction with the story at times pretty much telling you to goof around for a bit before continuing the main quest (probably because people were less used to open world games maybe?).

I think daggerfall had you on actual timers so if you weren’t at the correct locations in time the game would be impossible to complete. Which sure is a way to resolve the false sense of urgency lmao.