Did you need the university framework to grow as a person, or maybe it was the independence, that allowed that growth?
It sound super fucking corny, but when I left home at 18, I didn't really know who I was as a person. University really helped me find that.
It's not just the independence, but the fact that at university you have a lot of free time, and you have a lot of opportunities to meet and interact with people from different backgrounds, who have different interests to you. I don't want to spend my days hanging out with a bunch of software engineers. I'm actually proud of the fact that in my circle of friends, I don't know anyone who's a software engineer. I actually hate talking about software or computers outside of work, I spend 40+ hours a week doing that shit, I want to do anything that doesn't involve software engineering for the other 128 hours of the week.
Would you only know software engineers if you hadn't gone to university? I did not attend university and did not know another software engineer (outside of interacting with some online like on HN) until about 15 years into my career when a good friend started dating one. It does not really seem like the norm to only know software engineers. We're a pretty small segment of the population (~0.8% of the workforce).
But I do know people who's entire circle of friends is programmers and tech people. I guess if they're happy, then they're happy, but it's not for me. I enjoy my job, but there are other things I enjoy more.
> no happier
The other side isn’t better. I make less than most of my friends and they, by virtue of independent wealth or higher income or elite status, are significantly happier than me.
> I make less than most of my friends and they, by virtue of independent wealth or higher income or elite status, are significantly happier than me.
I'm not really in the "money is irrelevant" bucket but this doesn't look like a monetary problem you're facing here.
Seems like you overtuned things and hit a lot of diminishing returns, where you worked hard but didn't see much for it, but now you assume people who work less hard have seen even less, but that's not actually always the case because well we are told the world is unfair quite often, yet in cases like work we for some reason decide not to believe it.
I know for a fact people who have worked less hard have more...but again, mostly at better schools, or have wealthier backgrounds or are just plain luckier than me.
I guess the real problem is I'm still a failure no matter how much effort I put in.
Everyone else I know was in the same situation. We spent 4 years partying, hanging out, and having a good time.
I'm aware that it is a position of privilege to be able to say that university is a place to find yourself, but it's not a position of immense privilege at all in New Zealand, or most of the western world for that matter.
These days, I earn enough that I generally don't worry about money. I check my bank balance on payday to see how much I've got, and don't worry about it for the next month. I'm no happier than I was when I had to check my balance every time I went to the shops, when I had $5 to last me 2 days to payday. Sure, I'm less stressed, but I'm not happier.
I don't know about others, but for me university was an important experience as a place where I could grow as a person. It's a time where you get a few years to figure it all out before you spend the next 45 years working. Even if I could've done a 1 year course and then jumped straight into working full time, I wouldn't want to do that, and I don't think people should necessarily do that. There's more to life than getting a good qualification and getting a job that pays well.
I earn more than practically everybody in my friend group, yet I'm no happier than they are. I'm not more fulfilled in my life because I have a piece of paper that says I'm good with computers.