Very true. Unfortunately, my options were "mature and learn at college" or "work a minimum wage job in rural America" after high school graduation, and given my years of experience at that point with minimum wage jobs and rural America (since I couldn't afford to move away from my parents), the choice was very clear. I spent that time at college maturing and learning, and now I work a very rewarding, intellectually stimulating job in software. In a climate where nobody knows how to code and education is not highly valued, I would never have picked up programming or computer science and ended up where I am now if I hadn't gone to college. I'm very glad to be earning decent money and living in an big city (personal preference, admittedly) instead of working minimum wage food service or manual labor.

Sure, but I probably would have been a different one with very different ideas.