Alternatives.

Allan Bloom, speaking at DePauw University, September 11, 1987 ...

These are the charmed years when you can, if you so choose, become anything you wish ... [you] also have the opportunity to survey your alternatives -- not merely those current in your time or provided by careers, but those available to you as human beings. The importance of these years for an American cannot be overestimated. They are civilization's only chance to get to him.