/lit/ - Literature

>>13022168
I think >>13022198 covers why people choose to go to post-secondary schools in general quite well, but I interpreted your question as more specific to Chicago so I'd like to answer in that vein.
I chose Chicago – and the volume of work that comes with it – because I wanted to challenge myself and find where my mental limits are. I was never challenged in high school, and I didn't want go through life never having tested myself (whether that ended in success or failure). And for the most part I enjoyed life at Chicago. The work was a lot, but I took enough classes outside of my major to keep a good mental subject balance (humanities/stem). I think why it largely didn't feel like being a robot just doing the work is because of how many different fields I was sampling, how much I was learning, and how much everyone cared about what they were studying, despite how taxing it was. I will admit that I hate most of mathematics now (barring one field that I still adore), but that's because I forced myself to complete the major when I should have switched to something different years ago.