Be with the right friends, get good enough grades, express myself my personality in the right way, every single thing I did affected my "future life". Every single adult was telling me this every moment of my life.
Get the grade or become a ditch digger. Pursue the right interests or be poor all of your life.
There is NO CHILL. College is, for most people, a ONE TIME opportunity - the default track is you go to college after high school, and there are ways to do it after but most people don't end up doing it. Degree programs mostly assume you're coming out of high school. Getting a degree while paying for living expenses is practically impossible without going into massive debt, which you may or may not be tolerant of the risk to take on. You can't work min wage and make rent in most places, let alone go to a community college. Young people's economics already is horrific.
I say this as someone who didn't have the opportunity to get a degree and who managed to scrape my way into a software engineering career - something that I don't recommend anyone do as its nearly impossible without connections and mentorship. Structurally we are making kids make decisions that will effect their entire lives and giving almost no recourse to anyone who can't make it happen right at 18. If you have a shitty home life, you're fucked. If you have health problems, you're fucked. There's very few second chances for college in this society.
* yes, I know very very very few service members ever get shot at