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Agreed.  I generally enjoy making those personal connections in the privacy of my own head thank you very much.  And we've probably all had literature courses where there's "that girl" or guy who feels compelled to to walk the class through the revelatory personal connections she's making to the material.  And it's not always terribly interesting to everyone else.  Mostly I think that this rigid distinction between school and "real life" is to blame.  Being a student, getting to devote 40, 60, 80 hours per week to working on yourself, your mind, fine-tuning, revising a worldview... it's the most self-indulgent thing in the world.  The only product you're really responsible for producing is yourself.  If a student can see it this way, if they feel like this whole thing is their project, that they're in charge of it, I can't imagine the separate "personal" sphere would seem as distinct or automatically more desirable.