>>“Campus life” is ridiculously expensive and unnecessary IMO. Besides, it can be distracting and interfere.<<
I couldn’t disagree more. Oh, its true that college is way too expensive and everything in this article is true, but don’t blame living on campus or anything else related to the “college experience.” Its actually the best thing about college. People that go straight to work out of high school or even to college and don’t have this experience will seek it later in life through a mid-life crisis, affair, divorce or something equally destructive. Sure, there are exceptions (on both sides — those that had the experince still behave immaturely and others that didn’t, don’t), but IN GENERAL, its better to live out your later childhood/early adulthood with the college experience — a lot of freedom, little responsibility, etc., AND the best way to do that is to be as plugged in to your college social life as possible.
Don’t misunderstand: I’m not advocating being a drunk frat boy — I wasn’t — didn’t come anywhere near a frat and neither did most of my friends. But I bet is you had three groups — those that went through “campus life” in college, those that didn’t, but still went to college, and those that didn’t go at all, all other things being equal, the first group would be the most fulfilled in general.
I graduated from college just over 20 years ago. I looked at my transcript a few years ago and completely forgot about a class that I took (and made an A in) my last semester on campus. Needless to say, I got nothing from that class, but have a lot of great memories of fun I had with people I haven’t seen in almost 2 decades. Sure, I could have gotten that just hanging out with people outside of college, but I got the degree too!
Ya. My life in College was boring. I was in engineering. Doubly boring.
We did have study groups and I’d go to the occasional campus activity when I wasn’t busy.
But I spent most of the time working on weekends, Spring Break (usually a take home exam or two to work on or a major project), and the Summers towards the end. Holidays were an excuse to catch up. :(