There is painful and then there is excruciating

[Persephone]

I never bothered much with sending my kids to college.  I only did it once, long ago, before my hiatus. I had forgotten how dull it was, and how incredibly loooooong it takes. 

I started a new neighborhood and wanted to make my new family more rounded by graduating them from college.  I want them to have access to the LTW, multiple wants locking and new careers and rewards.  Blah, is all I can say.  It's even more boring that I remember.  I finally resorted to locking the needs decay and just having them do assignments, essays and research at triple speed and then having them take the exams soon as their bar if filled.  Even then it's boring and too long.  So that took care of that, but I don't look forward to having to do it over and over again

Any tricks on either speeding up the process, or making it at least more bearable? like in oh, I don't know...fun??

I don't send my sims to college at all.  I just use merola's mulitpainting (modthesims2.com) to get them in any career I want and there's another hack, I can't remember where I got it though, anyway it looks like the money tree but it will give you the want locks and slots.  The new nightlife cheat will also give you all the careerrewards.  Only thing my sims don't have is the stupid diploma.
 

[Karen]

I don't send my sims to college at all.  I just use merola's mulitpainting (modthesims2.com) to get them in any career I want and there's another hack, I can't remember where I got it though, anyway it looks like the money tree but it will give you the want locks and slots.  The new nightlife cheat will also give you all the careerrewards.  Only thing my sims don't have is the stupid diploma.

The money tree object is by Twojeffs.

There is a new buyable "counterfeit diploma" by Christianlov available at modthesims2 (http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=118632) that will do all of the above, plus allow you to choose a major and a GPA.  It gives you access to the Uni careers as though your Sim had actually graduated -- no need to use Merola's painting to choose a career anymore unless you want to.  I have been using this new diploma object for a few days, no problems so far.

Karen