I noticed something strange after I left the Fire Cavern with Squall during my playthrough yesterday. Squall was level 19 at the time. Once Squall levels up, the experience needed to reach the next level stays at 1000 exactly. It never goes up beyond 1000. Toward the end of Disc 1, I would earn around 350 exp per battle. So for every 3 battles, each character would gain a level (every 15 battles = 5 levels gained). It took me 15 minutes to raise each character up 8 levels. It has been around 2 years since I played FF8, and I don't recall any of this.

Is this supposed to happen?

yes it suppose to happen, in FF8 Xp nerver goes beyond 1000

That is so stupid! Why would they do that? It's bad enough that my Junctioned magic is very strong. Not to mention Rinoa and Irvine are level 13, and everyone else is level 30+ (Squall is almost level 40, and I just started the 2nd disc.) I never imagined it would be this easy.

There is an island later in the game where each battle will gain you like 8 levels. You can easily get all your characters to level 100 in about an hour or so.

Levels in FF* determine difficulty. The higher your level, the harder the enemies will be.

I noticed that, but for the most part, the enemies were so easy, I could draw 100 high level magics with three characters each, without dying, or getting close to dying.

I just realized i put * instead of 8 lol XD

try beating a malboro then, they are so damn annoying