Your bittersweet experience with Existentialism soounds like something Kafka would have written.
The Dean would probably have said: “See? Now you have lived the genre for yourself. That was our planned goal all along. No need to thank me!”
ROFL! And the Dean would have been right! It was truly absurd. Only Kafka would have written it far better, of course. I do remember falling asleep while trying to slog through Being and Nothingness and awakening short of breath thanks to that weighty tome on my chest and thinking “Kafka had the cockroach down pat, but I think I now know it feels to be a silverfish squished in a big old book!”