Hmm, I think classes were probably last on my list of what I gained out of college?
Most of what I found important:
- Perspective. In high school you're the best by a longshot, but then once you get to college you end up just average or below average. Then, you get to constantly interact with all these people all the time, learn from them, and expand how you view and approach things. This also means this is the easiest time to meet the smartest and most capable people, right at the ground level, before they become founders and VPs. Maintain the relationships through the years, and they'll be the people that you tap or that tap you.
- Hyper-social interaction. Never again will you be surrounded by so many people in close proximity in the same phase of life trying to achieve the same goals. You can try to recreate this by living in a city, but you'll never have everyone within walking distance, just spending 110% of your time with everyone. Just walk to class and have 3 meaningful interactions along the way. This is also why so many people marry someone they metin college. It's just way easier when you meet 100 new people to date every day.
- Independence. You don't need college for it, but it is a key part of the college experience. You learn how to live on your own, how to live with roommates, how to do all your own chores, how to feed yourself. You set your own schedule for how you want to use your time, how much time you want to spend on classes (or not), how to juggle all your responsibilities, any clubs you want, and of course all your social time.
- Career prep. This is a bit more college specific, because the culture on campus will differ, but you learn by talking with people in your class and years above what is needed for each phase. So, find out what other people needed to do to get their choice of job offers before graduating, and start prepping on those things. See what internships your peers are getting and what it takes to get the name brand ones. The college itself is also a powerful brand name and can make your future job searches easier, if people recognize the college and form a favorable first impression because of it.
- Classes. Probably the two main things I learned are 1) how to modulate the amount of work i put in to get the grades i wanted. You don't always need perfect grades, and you don't always need to study every single night to get them, so figure out how to put in exactly the amout of effort you need to get the exact GPA that you want. 2) what things are there in the world. So, I basically don't remember anything that i learned in college, but I remember all the princicples and the ideas and the fact that such things exist. I still have my textbooks that I can look things up in, but now with google, it's even easier. I just need to know that there is some principle or idea or some way to solve this problem, and i just look it up. Without taking the classes, I wouldn't even know where to begin. But now i just need to keep all the pointers to the knowledge, not the actual knowledge itself.