office culture is someone bringing in donuts and everyone for some reason refusing to take a whole one and cutting off 3/8 of the donut and then at the end of the day there's like 17/25ths of 9 different donuts left
nyc specifically. if you didn't want to go to your zoned school (which i absolutely was not), then yes. shit was more stressful than college applications. and specialized high schools had entrace exams (auditions if laguardia).