&gt; When I was in University I didn&#x27;t understand why some people didn&#x27;t care about grades and partied so much. When we left school and got into the real world I understood why: they had rich parents with contacts that could get them good jobs or seed capital for their own businesses.<p>I&#x27;m not from the US, so I obviously can&#x27;t tell if the same is true there (and I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if it wasn&#x27;t, given the sheer cost of tuition): here, there&#x27;s a strong push for most people to go to university straight out of high school because that&#x27;s what&#x27;s done if you&#x27;re at least averagely smart as you need to to get a well-paid job (or so the story goes, regardless of its truthfulness).<p>At the same time, many people don&#x27;t really know what they want to do (and degrees here lack the breadth of those in the US), so they end up dicking around a lot, going out partying, because they have no real focus. They don&#x27;t care about their grades—they don&#x27;t even care about university—it&#x27;s purely a means to an end (i.e., getting a decently paid job), and when that end is more than a couple of years away while you simultaneously get your first taste of freedom as an adult, it&#x27;s hard to care about effects that are years away.