Take a few deep breaths. You are getting wrought up over my claiming that some fields of work do not really care if you cleaned bathrooms for 20 hours a week in college.

Doing some work in college can be a good thing. As I stated, I worked a bit in college. But work for work's sake does not a successful employee make. 

they can't possibly be smart enough to learn what you learned while they spend a few hours each day working in a real job.

This has nothing to do with how SMART they are; rather it is a statement of how much time they have available to study for the subject. As I said, I was a TA for Chem 352 at BYU for a few semesters. The kids getting As in that class were not the kids who were spending their days working a "real job." It did not make the "A" kids smarter than their peers per se. But yes, it did make them more competent at the subject. When it comes to subject mastery, TIME does matter.

In professions where subject mastery is key, having paid your way through college is, at best, irrelevant. (And at worst deleterious). No one cares how you got there. They care what you know and how good at the subject you are. If you are just hiring for a job that needs a good work ethic, cleaning toilets in the JSB can develop that. But when your profession is contingent on being highly competent at anatomy (or whatever), no one cares if you cleaned toilets as a 20 year old. Absent a better metric, grades and test scores matter. Having high grades and test scores becomes harder when you have to wake up at 5 am to clean toilets. My dad had to do that. His grades suffered. He did not want that for me and my brothers. Hence he helped us out with housing costs. I think it's gonna be okay.