ive been thinking a lot about why im still in college even when the building is going well.
its not the degree. i dont think the degree matters that much in the long run, at least not in the way most people talk about it. what matters is the sandbox.
college, especially a place with a lot of different kinds of people, is one of the last environments where you can experiment without the full weight of consequences. you can try ideas, try versions of yourself, try working with people you would never have met otherwise, and if it doesnt work you can still walk away relatively clean.
once you step fully into the real world every decision starts carrying more permanent weight. the cost of being wrong goes up. the cost of exploring just for the sake of exploring goes up. that changes how you think. you become more careful, which is useful, but you also become less willing to look stupid in public, which is dangerous if you want to keep learning.
i dont want to romanticise it. a lot of college is also just noise and wasted time. the group projects that go nowhere, the classes that feel completely disconnected from anything real, the social performance. but the parts that matter, the late night conversations, the random projects, the people who force you to update your worldview, those are hard to recreate later.
ive noticed that the best builders i know still try to keep some version of a sandbox even after they leave. they take weird side projects. they talk to people outside their domain. they deliberately put themselves in situations where they dont have status yet. i think thats the real skill. protecting the ability to stay a beginner in some areas even when the rest of your life is getting more serious.
for me right now college is still that protected space. i know it wont last forever. but while its here im trying to use it properly. not just for the credential but for the freedom to still be figuring things out in public. to still be allowed to change my mind without it costing me a reputation or a paycheck.
theres also something about the density of people. you meet founders, researchers, people who are completely lost, people who are already further along than you. all of it compresses your learning in a way that is hard to get once everyone around you is optimising for the same narrow outcomes.
i dont know if that makes complete sense. it just feels true. and i keep coming back to it whenever someone asks me why i havent dropped out yet. the honest answer is that im still using the sandbox. and im not ready to close it.