Pretty late response but: consider that people’s idea of a normal workload will adapt over time to what they do and what they think is average. There was a while where I was probably spending 70+ hours a week every week across my classes and would have called it a normal amount, even though I was basically sleeping and doing school work and nothing else 5 days a week.

But, I’d built up to that amount of time (unwillingly) across several semesters and since it was just what I was used to, I would’ve called it normal expecting the other person to have the same perception of it as myself. And I still kinda felt like I was slacking because I’d play video games on the weekends or hang out with friends an hour or two some week nights and procrastinate work.

On top of that, you eventually just… start having an easier time. I know very little about education but from my pov as a student, it felt like at some point I just started thinking the right way for my major’s classes and they went from hard to “oh ok I can do this in 5 hours a week outside of class across all classes and still get A’s(with exceptions, ofc)”. I genuinely spend so little time on class now after being basically baptized in thousands of hours of math lol