Is academia just a display of how well you can be a good cog in a system? I feel like I've done more admin work than development just to pass. Too far in to quit though.

Academia teaches you to follow rules and punishes ingenuity.

> "Maintain the status quo, and do what everyone else is doing, just a little bit better. And be sure to follow directions!"

The education system was designed to produce good factory workers, and even mimicked (and still does) much of the factory environment: bells for shift/class changes, short scheduled lunch breaks, individual work areas where everyone performs the same work, working quietly by yourself with minimal talking, a supervisor making rounds, suspension/expelling as punishments, a fixation on exactly following directions, etc.

It absolutely teaches you to be a cog.

But cogs see other cogs as "functional members of society," so be wary where you get opinions from.