I was born in post-communist country to the familly of blue collar workers, where nobody around me didn't even finished high school (fun fact, those more distan

I was born in post-communist country to the familly of blue collar workers, where nobody around me didn't even finished high school (fun fact, those more distant family members who actually had university degree or even hold profesorship position spent many years mining for uranus in political prison and then decades sweeping streets). Anyway, I already had fulltime position working as software developer since the age of 17 (it was a bit of necessity, but I also like it very much) and after finishing my highschool diploma I decided to not apply and continue working. I went to study CS at the age of 23, while still working fulltime. Being a bit older and more experienced, but also time constrained changed my perspective a bit. I was in there just to get knowledge that I decided are relevant for me, there was close to zero time to be spent on social time or taking some filler classes that might be interesting. I spent three years in university, taking all the classes that sound interesting to me in areas of math, compilers, machine learning and computational logic. At that point I depleted the pool for both bachelor and masters classes and for the rest of the time I would have to go through fillers and decided to quit without graduating. I am glad about both of my choices: both having break between high school and university and quiting early. I feel like spending time in university is very valuable for both professional and personal growth and everybody should probably took it if they can afford it, but I don't think that this is your only valid choice. It should be ok to spend few years wandering around to find what you want to do with your life instead of spending rest of your life paying for debt you acquired just because you can't see any other viable path.