I went to college a while ago, but not THAT long ago (I'm not yet 40) at a small, quirky liberal arts school with no frats or sororities that is in the top 25 colleges nationwide. College was nothing like this for me at all. Admittedly I surrounded myself with bright and interesting people, but they weren't hard to find. Most of the alums I know are doing fascinating things. However, not many of them are making money, and certainly some of our grads are fulfilling the "loser liberal arts grad" stereotype--that is, they have a degree in philosophy and work at Starbucks. They are probably pretty interesting to talk to, though, and they may well be pursuing art or something else worthwhile on the side. Oh, laugh if you like. I don't care. The world is a bit of a hard and dreary place, and at 24, I'm not convinced that depressed newbie corporate drone is doing that much better than Starbucks dude, though admittedly, he/she is probably not living at home and is asaving something for retirement.
Most of the people I ended up meeting in college had various levels of what, in hindsight, were severe psychological issues.
And I mean really severe issues.
They were very bright and very "interesting", but not in a good way.
Two of the people I know ended up in the psych ward a number of times. One guy took crowbars and smashed car windows for fun. His friend would throw knives at you. One guy would smash live cats against walls for fun.
Another guy I knew in the dorm already drank himself to death.
My first college roommate had just committed a felony, was an alcoholic, and would piss in the hallway. As one of the other people in the dorm once noted "hey, this floor is sticky!"
And this was the honors dorm, with the intelligent people. There was true weirdness there. And then we had the aspies, too.
Eventually, I started hanging out with the evangelicals because, while they wanted to convert me and didn't really like me, they were relatively psychologically stable.
I really didn't have the social tools to deal with crazy, considering that I didn't realize that crazy even existed.