I have difficulty putting it into words but this sounds like one big excuse blaming society/parents/school for his failures rather than himself, which is where they lie.
Discipline isn't something that you are born with, and if nobody is there to teach it to you then you have to teach it to yourself. It sounds to me like the author is beginning to learn his lessons, but that doesn't change the failures of his childhood parents/mentors who clearly did not adequately prepare him for college.
One of the reasons that I like college as an institution though is that it is a 'safe' place for you to learn the gaps in your childhood education. It's more or less a safe haven for you to finally be on your own but with still lessened consequences.
When you always have a group of people supporting you (like your parents), it's difficult to realize that you lack discipline, and it's difficult to realize the full consequences of your laziness.
In my opinion, we need to stop perpetuating this idea that children are some kind of tabula rasa that must be filled with knowledge from their parents, as if to say that children are incapable of figuring things out for themselves. This thought process is what the excuse makers in life thrive on.
So far I have met very, very few people who didn't have some sort of mental breakdown during their 20s. Attributing it to "youthful idealism", or what have you, sounds rather disingenuous. Also, there are definite problems with the reverse idea of "you're not special, you're just a cog in a machine" -- namely that once you think that way about yourself, you also start thinking that way about other people and then you're thinking of people as things.
Besides, you are special. You're just not more special than the guy next to you.