People always point out the social and networking benefits, which can certainly be great, but college can also be a very limiting social environment in a lot of ways. It often extends the cliques and general self-conscious stupidity of high school years and makes it easy to get completely stuck in that mind-and-soul numbing bourgeois bubble of social status and judgment, and if you aren't careful you can get pushed along on the conveyor belt into a job that's just a further extension, and you'll never get to have your own life.
You can actually learn a lot more about life and relationships by putting yourself in difficult, unfamiliar situations rather than cushy curated ones. Backpacking solo around the world or starting fresh in a big city doesn't get you into the Yale Entrepreneur's Club, but the things you learn and the contacts you get can be more unique and diverse, and I'd venture that a capable person will tend to end up with a better education and more adaptable people skills this way, but I don't want to downplay that it can be very very difficult to swim against the current, especially if you don't have great social confidence to begin with. It's still worth it though. The real world is tougher, but it's a lot easier to find meaning there versus being stuck on the good grades-good salary-right friends-high valuation-Achieve Success Treadmill Of Doom (tm).
>> You can actually learn a lot more about life and relationships by putting yourself in difficult, unfamiliar situations rather than cushy curated ones.
I could not agree more.
Last summer, at the age of 20, I picked a random country of Europe, in which I hadn't been before, booked a cheap flight and went there on my own just with a backpack. I didn't have any plans, I didn't know any people or places there, and I even didn't understand the local language.
I wanted to challenge myself, so I chose to have a flight back from the other airport, which was 600 km away from the place I had landed - that's to make sure that I will not spend all the time in one city - I must travel in order to get out of the country. Also, I decided, that in 2 weeks I must never pay for a bed - meet strangers, go to the places where noone goes, or sleep wherever and whenever I can - but prove to myself that it's possible.
Those 14 days, I spent traveling through the entire Portugal, was the most amazing time in my life so far. Every day I was meeting someone new and every day it was different experience. I was surprisingly lucky to be hosted by 10 strangers in 10 cities I visited, even though I often didn't know where I will be after a day - everywhere I went people were just saying to me: "You must see <that> place, it's really worth and it's so close!".
I still remember the conversions I had - every evening they were totally different, depending on the people I was drinking local beer on wine with: from a photographer of Porto sports magazine, and 40 years old famous Portuguese actor, who lived in the heart of Lisbon, was singing in French and preparing for the performance after a few days in Paris, to 60 years old Portuguese woman coffee shop owner, and exchange students from Turkey and Russia with their own culture and traditions.
However, I spent three nights sleeping on wild Atlantic beaches alone, which I had never done before. I also had a few days without seeing any people at all.
When I was back, I felt like I had learned more about life than in my whole academic year at university. I learned how to deal with myself during the permanent moments of uncertainty. I realised how often the problems are really not such huge as we tend to imagine. When you throw yourself into the world, in which you don't know anyone and noone knows you, you become responsible for every decision you make, - you always have to think forward, you can't be nervous or scared. Now I am no longer afraid of being with myself for a few days in the nature without any communication devices (including a computer - not so easy for a programmer) and without other people. Also, I started to love meeting strangers and learning about things I never imagined existing before.
That's a kind of experience, which nobody will teach you at university. There are no classes on that. It's something, what you have to take from the life by yourself.
You can actually learn a lot more about life and relationships by putting yourself in difficult, unfamiliar situations rather than cushy curated ones. Backpacking solo around the world or starting fresh in a big city doesn't get you into the Yale Entrepreneur's Club, but the things you learn and the contacts you get can be more unique and diverse, and I'd venture that a capable person will tend to end up with a better education and more adaptable people skills this way, but I don't want to downplay that it can be very very difficult to swim against the current, especially if you don't have great social confidence to begin with. It's still worth it though. The real world is tougher, but it's a lot easier to find meaning there versus being stuck on the good grades-good salary-right friends-high valuation-Achieve Success Treadmill Of Doom (tm).