Re Colleje L'arnin' Versus Real-World...

Re colleje l'arnin' versus real-world...

After three years of college-prep high school, I chose a college that had a year-'round trimester program. I set out to do five terms on-campus, three terms off (i.e. taking all my "summers" at once), then three terms back on to finish.

I was an idiot. There were a dozen major problems with this plan that I only understood once I started living through it. I survived five terms in a row, but was seriously burned out by the end.

We were required to do one off-campus term of work, and through a relative I got a job at a TV station, bottom rung, mailroom clerk and general go-fer, but I got to wander around and watch all the operations, so it was really great. I kept the job for ten months, then traveled around before going back to college. (A year off, yet kept my 2-S draft dodge. Guilty.)

High school summers I'd worked at dirty, hard manual labor jobs, which was good, but while living at home. Not the same as being on my own out of town.

Going back to college was an eye-opener. The college had changed a lot. Courses vital to my (stupid) major had been dropped. Old friends had dropped out. My advisor was gone. I was going to have to change majors and go at least five more terms to graduate! (I got to meet the future Mrs. Webworker, so, there's that.)

But, mostly, time spent in the "real" world, even just that flunky job, paying for my own apartment (with only a little help from the 'rents), being on my own, showed me that college - at least, that liberal-arts college, was a terrible waste of my time and mind. After just two months, I quit. Probably could have done something wiser, but I had no good advice.

A couple of years later I burned up some of my inheritance trying to start a crazy business. Terrible losses, big disaster, lost friends, ended in a half-million dollar lawsuit (which I "lost," but only charged the amount we really owed and which we'd offered before the suit), but, wow! was it educational! Don't think any business school could've given me what I learned doing that.

FWIW