>>936267602 (OP)useful. i went for two years in 2014 and skipped a lot of class and failed a lot of class.
i went back in 2022 and went really hard. i did 18 credit hours every semester (12 is "full time", each class is usually 3 hours), plus one summer when i didn't have an internship. i got research roles and did internships. i was in clubs and made friends with people in class. got a gf. graduated and got a job.
it goes by fast and it's easy to miss out by not participating. i wish i would have done it right the first time but i don't think i was mentally mature enough to "get it". i also wish i went to a better school. i fucked around in high school and couldn't get into any good colleges because i had like a 1.8 GPA, so i had to go to a state school.
i would have had better opportunities and education at a nicer school. i'm CS, and companies like nvidia and facebook and google aren't recruiting from some middle-of-the-pack college.
theoretically, the optimal play would have been to go into the army right out of high school, do a 3 year contract, and use the GI bill to get into a nice school at like 21 years old.
all in all it was useful and i got what i needed out of it. i'm now making 110k remotely and everything is ok.