Oh I see, I remember that show
That would be cruel and unusual punishment for a professor to assign a ten page paper due the next morning. Maybe they did that in the old days or there are still a few professors who would actually do that today which would suck. Fortunately, professors I've had are at least more reasonable than that to give us more time to do the assignments and study for exams. I think English, social science or those type of majors are required to read a lot more than say business majors (though with finance and accounting, study time is geared towards more practice in math with relatively little reading for understanding) in general.
Chapters I have to read for my class are at least thirty pages long each. Since it's a summer course, we cover four to six chapters a week. I did take Microbiology (very interesting class, fun lab too) and remember it was a little more reading than I anticipated for a lower level course and required a substantial amount of reading though not as intensely comprehensive as the 4000 level class I'm taking. Most general education courses and prerequisites I took freshman and sophomore year required really light reading or none at all - you could study off lecture notes/powerpoint and never buy the book lol though it's advised to do the few chapters worth of reading anyway for your own benefit. There were more essays, homework, quizzes, presentations, knowledge based (memorization type) tests early on then.
It really depends on the class/professor's method of teaching because sometimes you do (professor doesn't lecture well and/or the subject matter being tested of the course goes into considerable depth) and sometimes you don't have to do all the reading (professor does lecture well/level of subject matter being tested is pretty superficial like this art appreciation class I took - the tests were ridiculously easy). I know definitely for graduate school, there's a lot of research (papers coupled with presentations) thus a lot of reading to be done regularly. Nursing majors I know have a lot of heavy reading to do/practical skills to be read about and learned even before day one - they really have to read everything required and more. Managerial classes I've taken require kind of reading through a few chapters, but very easy reading. It doesn't really get hard or too challenging until 4000 level and after really, though certain courses on the way can be challenging (microeconomics/macroeconomics I found tough then as well as business calculus) especially with a bad professor. In essence, college isn't really hard in the beginning - just a time commitment and how much effort/value (willingness to learn) one puts in his or her education, but guess the level of difficulty depends on your major (I heard engineering and aware nursing is especially challenging), aptitude/study ethic too. Though some people have done well even without college.
Yeah, public speaking/presentations irks me sometimes especially when it's about a topic I don't like. It isn't my forte, but I managed to do okay. For some reason, I always end up having to lead on group work and keep tabs on my team's progress because I want to get a good grade and not procrastinate (type A personality, school geek - guilty). It sucks when you have slackers as group mates, though when you're in honors I think you're bound to be at least be on the same playing field as everyone which is good to be able to learn from each other. It can get competitive which I like, because it kind of gives (well, me personally) more incentive to do even better. Taking honors classes is really great, better professors and smaller class sizes too.
