The strongest available evidence on the relative pleasantness of work and school comes from the Princeton Affect and Time Survey (PATS). Surveyors phoned a random sample of Americans and walked them through the previous day to find out (a) how respondents spent their hours, and (b) how each activity made them feel at the time—happy, stressed, sad, interested, pained? All PATS emotion scales run from 0 (not feeling the emotion at all) to 6 (feeling the emotion very strongly). Main result: ranking activities from most to least pleasant, work and education are both near the bottom of the list.
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