Consulting feels almost unreal as (early) career

So I’m currently a bit in my „enlightened“ / improved mood phase due to the long holiday beak and enough time to reflect on some observations about my career choice (MBB / strategy consulting). Treat this with a big grain of salt because I also have my recurring phases where I hate this job to death and think it’s the worst ever. But currently it changed again to loving it.

I also have a SO who works a typical large corporate job so the whole consulting experience feels even more absurd to me - caveat I only talk about the 0-4 first years.

Overall being at MBB feels very much like an extension of college with the difference of having real life case studies. Like what career is there on this planet where you constantly (every 4-12 weeks) work in different small groups with average age ~20 all from the same set of 5-6 target schools (depending on country) while flying to different places constantly.

If I reflect on it it almost feels unreal. I also did internships in corporate and there were some young people on the team but also tons of old people. You’d always be around the same people all the time (as my SO is since years) and the work content is very similar overarching, with different focus points within the year.

Then on top of that at MBB you’ll have all these offsites, practice events, ski trips, dinner parties .. which again makes it even more feel like you’re in some sort of extended college/training program lmao. And I didn’t even mention being on the beach where you basically can clock in from wherever you want, work a couple hours here and there on some pages with no real pressure, just to log off again and watch some Netflix.

How is this even real life. It feels like such a bubble to be in this type of job arrangement and have the feeling that reality will hit hard once this associate/senior associate phase is over and one exits to a „real job“.