After further discussion offline, I came to that conclusion too. Before college, I only had a vague idea of what I wanted to do that had no connection to reality or my temperament ("Building spacecraft is like model rockets, right?"). Doing practical work and going on field trips gave me the real taste of careers, and if I had gotten some of that in high school or sooner, yeah, I would've been looking at schools based on the major I ended up with, and done better, faster.
I was given free reign to explore my interests, but maybe not actively encouraged, especially where you need to go meet professionals in their workplace. I'll try to correct that with the next generation. A car factory or construction site can be just as fun as the zoo.
And if work is fun and part of a balanced diet, there's less need to 'detox' from life for a year, or four years.
