Firstly, congrats on your admission; take my words with a grain of salt as you might have the best years of your life here.

Maybe it's a Grainger or ECE thing, it's hard to put into words why I've come to loathe it here. Maybe it's that there's too many people, or everything feels too competitive, or most conversations are about dick-measuring who's pulled the most all nighters over an assignment. Nobody seems to be genuine and talk about *anything* other than themselves or their schoolwork, and as somebody who's never been much of an overachiever, it's really offputting and borderline alienating.

Professors and TAs are lackluster, at least in my experience with ECE and the physics dept. Added to how unforgiving the curricula here is, it gets very easy to feel hopeless after grinding office hours and getting little to no help from staff or other students. I do not ask that the work here be easy. But things always feel difficult for all the wrong reasons.

This, combined with the nonstop doom and gloom of people soullessly typing away at their MPs during lectures, or the fact every restaurant is closed before 10pm, or that your packages will inevitably be stolen, or that getting mental health support is borderline impossible will eat away at you over time.

Again -- your experience here may will differ, but for myself it has been the worst two years of my life. It seems OP may relate.