How do you deal with a boss and colleagues you can't stand

I work in finance (global commercial bank) in South Asia. I don't intend to build a career in commercial banking long term. The plan is to switch to the buy side (private equity, hedge funds, venture capital). I acknowledge that this switch will not be easy by any means and I will have to look for opportunities outside South Asia (North America, Singapore, Hong Kong) if I really want to thrive. Hence, I am looking into grad school as a pathway to that.

I hate my current job. The people I work with are not the kind of people I look up to. They are low-vibrational people. My boss is an asshole. He's never appreciative of my work and only nitpicks. I've always been a big believer of "you are the people you spend your time with". Given I have to spend 50+ hours of my week around these people that I cannot stand at all, I fear my ambitions may dim and I may start thinking like them. Leaving the job right away is not an option. Doing this job every day takes me a lot of willpower. People pleasing, showing face time as long as my boss is in the office, sucking up, making myself available even on my days off - these seem to be the only way for me to keep these idiots at work happy. I recognize that I am not an ice cream shop and that I can't make everyone happy. But it makes me anxious. When my boss picks on me or says sth negative about my work, without any appreciation for any of the job well done whatsoever, my heart beat increases. I get really anxious. I hate it. I hate the people I work with. Worth mentioning that I've been 10 months in this job and this is my first FT role post college.

Any advice on how I should deal with this situation? I may have to stick around until next fall when I can head off to grad school (haven't applied yet but applying this fall). What sucks though is I am lowkey using grad school as an escape mechanism. A better exit for me out of this job would have been getting a job I really love and with better people.

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