Excellent address by Andrew Abbott from the U of C. Key takeaway:

Or on the other hand you can seek education. It will not be easy. We have only helpful exercises for you. We can’t give you the thing itself. And there will be extraordinary temptations — to spend whole months wallowing in a concentration that doesn’t work for you because you have some myth about your future, to blow off intellectual effort in all but one area because you are too lazy to challenge yourself, to wander off to Europe for a year of enlightenment that rapidly turns into touristic self-indulgence. There will be the temptations of timidity, too, temptations to forgo all experimentation, to miss the glorious randomness of college, to give up the prodigal possibilities that — let me tell you — you will never find again; temptations to go rigidly through the motions and then wonder why education has eluded you.

Though I wonder if he’s merely playing with definitions of education and skills, I do think this bit is right. Hat tip from SQ, my whartonite buddy who should be so pleased that he self-selected into the culture of success.