was it worth it?

School was a waste for me. Definitely NOT worth the time, effort and money in my case.

Based on the return on investment of time and cost of going to college, yes!

Without question, yes. Getting into a good college for undergrad in a reputable program opens doors like you wouldn't believe. As an ex-slacker in good school, you really notice this ****.

The question is difficult because people have a range of talents, abilities, drives, and ambitions. Is it worth it for someone who doesn't want to go to college and aim for a more or less 'professional' life to get the requirements for that life? Is it worth it for someone to foreclose the opportunity to have that life because of a little extra work? There's a spectrum -- in the U.S., at least, a college degree is no guarantee of a good job, or any job at all. But it certainly is a requirement for many good jobs.

At the very least, applying yourself to your learning and to doing well is rarely a bad thing, especially if you are a good student and it's not too hard for you to do well -- that is not an opportunity given to all. Doing well in school will preserve the widest range of opportunities for you after school, and there are lessons learned from the discipline you have to maintain to do well.

As for me, it certainly was worth it, even though I'm back in school again -- I would never have had this opportunity had I not worked as hard as I did, and knowing that gives me the opportunity to hold my head high and know that my sweat and sacrifice was a substantial part of getting me to where I am.

Note that all of this implies an understanding about the risk of the path you are taking; hard work is hard work and I respect that, but hard work is not always valued as your might wish it was -- some people's labor have not gotten them where they wanted to be for many societal reasons, so do be sure that your expectations are reasonable (or that you are prepared to risk for your dreams -- something I do not discount, but that does not always work out).

Whatever you do, do it well.

~ H

Originally Posted by Windycity

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Were all those hours you invested into studying in high school/college worth it?

I did the assigned work and took the tests. Before an exam, I spent an hour or so reviewing class notes. I still have no idea what "studying" means or why people whine about it.

Originally Posted by Windycity

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Are you where you wanted to be?

I long ago stopped thinking about life in terms of serving myself (ie: "life is a journey not a destination").

Originally Posted by Windycity

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Im only in high school and I belong to the top 10 percent of all students in the country but I ask myself if it is really worth it. what do you guys have to say to this?

If you don't like school, where else would you go? The military? Chances are, you'll pass through an academic institution on the way to becoming an officer. A regular job? Not too many options there.

At any rate, if you don't want to go to college, don't. It'll always be there if you change your mind.

Biggest piece lf advice I can give kids these days is: don't slack off once you get to college. I busted ****** in HS, got into a great university, then took 'er a little too easy when I got there. Thought I deserved the break, frankly, and that my work was done.

Dumbest thing ever.

I do alright for myself, so it's not like I have failed my shot at life. But there's no question I'd be extremely more successful than I am now had I continued busting ****** in college. Not a day goes by that I don't rue my poor choices at that critical stage.

Originally Posted by Don Carlos

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Biggest piece lf advice I can give kids these days is: don't slack off once you get to college. I busted ****** in HS, got into a great university, then took 'er a little too easy when I got there. Thought I deserved the break, frankly, and that my work was done.

Dumbest thing ever.

I do alright for myself, so it's not like I have failed my shot at life. But there's no question I'd be extremely more successful than I am now had I continued busting ****** in college. Not a day goes by that I don't rue my poor choices at that critical stage.

What would have been different if you got better grades in college? Was there a particular opportunity that you missed out on because of poor grades?

Originally Posted by thenanyu

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What would have been different if you got better grades in college? Was there a particular opportunity that you missed out on because of poor grades?
There were more than a couple, yes. And, since opportunity cascades (i.e., the benefits of an early opportunity compound / build upon each other), the opportunity cost of my bad grades was pretty high over the course of my lifetime.

Originally Posted by Don Carlos

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There were more than a couple, yes. And, since opportunity cascades (i.e., the benefits of an early opportunity compound / build upon each other), the opportunity cost of my bad grades was pretty high over the course of my lifetime.

But then you might end up being too important to post on SF right? /shrug.

Originally Posted by Don Carlos

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There were more than a couple, yes. And, since opportunity cascades (i.e., the benefits of an early opportunity compound / build upon each other), the opportunity cost of my bad grades was pretty high over the course of my lifetime.

Maybe. But I sincerely believe that thinking about what could have been had you done EVERYTHING perfectly is a waste of time. As I posted earlier, if we all knew what we know now we might do things differently. But would we be any happier? I have my doubt.

I know some people who had a "plan" and followed it perfectly. All of them are successful but they are certainly not all happy or well adjusted. I think any well adjusted and ultimately happy life requires some level of adversity to overcome and some level of failure to deal with.

Originally Posted by ConcernedParent

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But then you might end up being too important to post on SF right? /shrug.
I dunno. I'd like to think I still could have been slinging dick jokes on SF as a Supreme Court justice or Goldman Sachs MD.

Originally Posted by Lord-Barrington

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Maybe. But I sincerely believe that thinking about what could have been had you done EVERYTHING perfectly is a waste of time. As I posted earlier, if we all knew what we know now we might do things differently. But would we be any happier? I have my doubt. I know some people who had a "plan" and followed it perfectly. All of them are successful but they are certainly not all happy or well adjusted. I think any well adjusted and ultimately happy life requires some level of adversity to overcome and some level of failure to deal with.
Your argument assumes two things: 1) That I am happy in my current state / with my outcome. 2) That I value peace of mind or "adjustment" over material success. Both of those are assumptions are, at least to some large degree, incorrect. I do agree that it's a waste of time to obsess over what went wrong, or what I could have done differently. Then again, I don't obsess over it. I don't really give it more than the occasional thought. Only reason I brought it up in the first place is because it provided some advice relevant to this thread.

I definitely slacked off a lot in school at all levels, ending up with very mediocre grades in high school, college, AND grad school.

Somehow, I lucked into some excellent schools--both college and law school--and job opportunities, even outside my fields of concentration. And I would definitely say that, above all else, having a recognized school name on my resume helped a lot in opening doors that might not otherwise be open. That is, I was able to leverage, say, an 10 points worth of effort in law school to get a job that would have required 100 points worth of effort from someone that didn't go to the kind of schools that I did. Does that make me smarter, or more likely to succeed? Not at all, but it has made everything a lot easier.

So while I might not be able to add much to "was the hours worth studying worth it", I will definitely add to the chorus that going to a good school is definitely worth it, at least in the US and in Asia (the OP, I take it, is from Switzerland, and I understand things work a little differently in Europe).
Not to say that you can't make it big with a run-of-the-mill diploma, but having that school name definitely makes the doors a lot more open and the roads a lot easier to travel.
And I do often regret that I was not diligent enough to (1) get myself into even better schools and/or (2) make the best out of the situation in which I found myself.

But in the end, it's all about what makes you happy, man. If being a Starbucks barista and working 35 hrs/wk and chilling the rest of the time is what makes you happy (and there's nothing wrong with that), then the hours invested probably won't have been worth it. And in fact, I'm sure this is a choice that a lot of people, especially in the US, make all the time.

My response to all of this is to always optimize your current situation. In a lot of industries, people's reputations are built upon one or two breakthrough successes, so if you are always on the lookout for your big break and prepared to grab it, chances are any past deficiencies will not affect you so much.

I'm a true believer in "it's never too late to start".

School did nothing but make me lazy, I've realized that I learned more from running a volunteer organization, working in the real world, and studying subjects that I enjoy on my own terms. But everybody is different.

All of my ambition and entrepreneurial/leadership skills came from when I ran the non-profit a couple of years into college. If I hadn't done that, I wouldn't be building a business today. I was a pretty stupid high school student.