>earbuds/headphones have been a thing for ages
>noise cancelling is now a common feature
yes, life is hard, but music and podcasts come to restore a little bit of the comfiness. school is absurd in general. in my experience, so much revolved around the instilling of discipline, rather than the developing passions and talents. i'd be forced to read in class, forced to speak up during socratic seminars, forced to share my stream of consciousness opinion to ears who didn't care. so much was acting as though you were busy, inorder to prevent the teacher from harassing you and even singling you out. this shit never made sense to me, and i never was able to really process the concepts i learned in school because the curriculum was dense, and the homework always piled up. even with homework, i'd be faced with either doing a long project diligently, but then i'd have no free time to spend with friends, or myself, or procrastinate, but i'd always stay up way too late and get no sleep just to turn in half assed ramblings that look vaguely like a finished project. school was such an absurd experience