Work for a year, then go to school. It will measure your skill vs your expectations. It will inform you as to the value in being where you are as opposed to where you think you can be with four years time focused in a few mostly parallel directions. It will ground you in the realities of making money how you can now compared to how you might. It will prepare you for working while in school so you can kill five (or more) birds with one stone. You can get soft working skills at the same time as your actual work skill increases without having to be dedicated to a career.
I can't stress this part enough: Pre-debt expenses amount to what, $2k per month? After you have debt and likely start carrying other expensive things around, you're under more income stress. Income when your expenses are small is highly gratifying. Income when your expenses are large is like a treadmill if it isn't high enough. You will enjoy pre-debt money more than any other money you will ever have until you are out of debt. Might as start life with a breather.
In school, you can change your career much more freely, but you have to intersect back with reality somewhere or else you aren't changing anything. While working, you're too busy working and doing lead generation etc to focus on changing your skill set drastically. Being independent ultimately makes this less of a problem, but doesn't make it go away. The classes that are a waste of time are only a waste of time when you don't pick them well or have no options for a particular semester, in which case you will have a similarly distracting workload, though honestly, once you've worked any crazy time, undergraduate is a f&*@ing joke that most people there (especially at state schools) are simply wanting a crutch to delay the adolescence-adult life transition.
College is a very good opportunity to change cities without getting super committed to a new area and without having to line up work in two places, which you have to do in career world. You have to have runway at point A and somewhat of a a landing at point B. That's a lot of headache and fortune compared to, "Oh cool, so I'll go move to that place and take out X loans."
Meeting people is not a bad side-effect. Out in the mix, you find rarely random people your age of similar life status who you can peer with and never in such large concentrations. People who are out of college in your age group will be of different lives than career folk. Just the truth. You might be egalitarian and non-judgmental, but that doesn't mean you're going to want to feel like your time is better spent elsewhere.
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Work for a year, then go to school. It will measure your skill vs your expectations. It will inform you as to the value in being where you are as opposed to where you think you can be with four years time focused in a few mostly parallel directions. It will ground you in the realities of making money how you can now compared to how you might. It will prepare you for working while in school so you can kill five (or more) birds with one stone. You can get soft working skills at the same time as your actual work skill increases without having to be dedicated to a career.
I can't stress this part enough: Pre-debt expenses amount to what, $2k per month? After you have debt and likely start carrying other expensive things around, you're under more income stress. Income when your expenses are small is highly gratifying. Income when your expenses are large is like a treadmill if it isn't high enough. You will enjoy pre-debt money more than any other money you will ever have until you are out of debt. Might as start life with a breather.
In school, you can change your career much more freely, but you have to intersect back with reality somewhere or else you aren't changing anything. While working, you're too busy working and doing lead generation etc to focus on changing your skill set drastically. Being independent ultimately makes this less of a problem, but doesn't make it go away. The classes that are a waste of time are only a waste of time when you don't pick them well or have no options for a particular semester, in which case you will have a similarly distracting workload, though honestly, once you've worked any crazy time, undergraduate is a f&*@ing joke that most people there (especially at state schools) are simply wanting a crutch to delay the adolescence-adult life transition.
College is a very good opportunity to change cities without getting super committed to a new area and without having to line up work in two places, which you have to do in career world. You have to have runway at point A and somewhat of a a landing at point B. That's a lot of headache and fortune compared to, "Oh cool, so I'll go move to that place and take out X loans."
Meeting people is not a bad side-effect. Out in the mix, you find rarely random people your age of similar life status who you can peer with and never in such large concentrations. People who are out of college in your age group will be of different lives than career folk. Just the truth. You might be egalitarian and non-judgmental, but that doesn't mean you're going to want to feel like your time is better spent elsewhere.