I'm the same -- changed my life, but the reason it changed my life was when I accidentally got into the humanities and had a cliched "Good Will Hunting" experience. Before then I was a different cliche, the science and tech guy who just wanted to learn the information and thought everything else was useless and everybody in other fields was stupid.

I wonder if the closer you are to the "just give me the information" fields, the more you have the attitude that it's a waste of time and you glory in the idea that you can do it yourself using only free online stuff? That would make sense. Certainly from a "conveying technical info" PoV college is at a significant disadvantage to free online curricula in a number of fields, at least for a motivated student.