You can have a little fun, as a treat
I took philosophy 101 as a freshman. I memorized the difference between modus tollens and modus ponens and tried to figure out what St Anselm was getting at in his ontological argument. I wrote a straightforward final paper that was worth a B minus and finished the course. I needed 4 credits, I earned them by drudging through 14 weeks of lectures and readings, and satisfied the implicit agreement that I had made with my university. That was what you did, right? What other option is there?
A year or two later my at-the-time roommate took the same course with the same professor. Towards the end of the semester, I saw his version of the final paper lying on a couch in the common room that we shared. Unlike me, he had earned an A.
His paper was about the ethics of zombies.
Two decades later, I don't remember the point of the essay. I don't even remember how zombies were involved. But I now know this was a moment in which a few tendrils of insight sprouted through the rigid sidewalk of my mind.
I like to think that I opened and closed my mouth a few times in confusion. Nobody had told me that you could engage your sense of playfulness to do something like fulfill general education requirements. Was this allowed? Could you have fun outside of a socially-sanctioned event? Just how far did this conspiracy of entertainment go?
We're not supposed to have fun in most situations. Fun is a thing that we set aside time for, that we drive to a location to experience. We're supposed to play at the playground as children, or maybe game with friends online, or compete on a soccer field, or "indulge" at Dave and Buster's.
You're not supposed to have fun in a dusty general education class. Or at the post office. Certainly not when you're shopping for a house, our taking your dog for its yearly vet visit, or scheduling an appliance repair, or any one of the nearly infinite side quests that make up our lives. No, those kinds of things are meant to be endured. Right?
I don't know where and when we learn this. But allow me to suggest: you can at least try to have a little fun, as a treat. You can try to make a survey-level, boilerplate, freshman-year class a bit more entertaining for yourself.
There's even a bit of humanity in doing so. Imagine a TA grading hundreds of papers, most breathlessly boring, and then encountering a philosophy of those bearing the terrible curse of eternal life. I'd expect they had a bit of fun in reading that. I know I would.
In fact, one of the pleasures I've encountered in the years since this realization is seeing other people realize that they themselves can have a little fun, as a treat.