a waste of money?

I like my microbiology teacher. She is a really nice lady and she has some good insights. Today, in an offhand comment to me as we were joking about not getting out of class early, she made an interesting observation. "You know, education is the one thing that people don't want to get their money's worth out of." Now isn't that interesting. It goes along with what I've been thinking about lately. Why is it that we don't utilize the possibilities that education provides to their fullest capacity? We do the least amount of work to just scrape through school by our boot straps (what are those anyway?). What if we had been brought up so that our way of life was to not get by with the least effort but come out with your time well spent. And I think some people were brought up that way, to some extent. But even those who have had this concept placed before them in their lives seem to still slip back into the 'normal' way of things. They may be considered 'overachievers' by their peers or 'smart', but they aren't even really doing all they could be. Far from it. Now, I'm not claiming to be in this last group. I wish I was. Anyway, some interesting thoughts. Feel free to muse away and activate those dendrites of yours....