We pay 10s or 100s of thousands to attend college. Some view this as a learning opportunity. If you go right after high school or shortly thereafter, it is a pivotal age of development, and in the United States anyway, students are often learning both in class as well as moving closer to learning how to be an adult in the world.

Others go to college not so much to learn in the more general sense, but because afterwards they expect a higher paying job. Or perhaps they are focused on a particular skill – I need this degree to go to medical school, or to become a biologist, etc.

Regardless of your reasons though, college in the United States is expensive! But many people decide it’s worth it.

Then, later in life, how often do we decide that education is worth the value? Our own “life” education that is, not continuing courses. Perhaps we make an investment that doesn’t work out, but through it we learn lessons that will allow us to make better investments in the future. Maybe we start a business that fails. Maybe we take a job that doesn’t work out.

These ‘lessons’ are often treated as failures. Expensive failures that we may beat ourselves up over.

But perhaps that expensive ‘lesson’ will lead to something great in the future. Most successful businesses were started by someone who failed a whole bunch before starting the success. They probably lost a lot in the process.

Perhaps we might change our mindset to think of life’s lessons as equally, if not more, valuable than the lessons we learned in our college classes.

We learn throughout our lives, some lessons are fruitful, others are costly. But if we take something away and do better next time, maybe it’s worth the cost.