One interesting thing that SA's question brings up, though, is...did Clark go to college? In the John Byrne re-telling, Clark leaves Smallville after high-school (and telling Lana "Yo, I can fly an' junk!" Meh.) and spends a couple years doing "angel of mercy" stuff anonymously around the world before he's caught on tape saving a crashing space-plane with Lois aboard. Right after that he snags his job at the Planet. But...while he was off being an anonymous do-gooder, did he manage to go to college?
HAH! According to the NEW reboot of the Superman origin myth, Clark left Smallville after high school and went off to see the world and work as a freelance stringer for a range of small newspapers. He picked up enough college credits in enough places along the way to get a BA by 25, and heard of, though never met, another ambitious reporter named Lois Lane. While covering a Rwanda-like situation in Africa, he used his powers to try to save a politician he'd come to like and respect from a gang of assasins. Didn't work, but for the first time, he felt like all the pieces of his life really fit together, and he determined that he was going to take up superheroing. He goes home, studies acting, makes the suit based on images from a sort of Kryptonian e-book that was sent along in the ship with him. He first meets Lois when she's chewing out the Planet's publisher for bullying Jimmy, and it's love at first sight.
The shuttle rescue, according to Birthright writer Mark Waid, was way too 1980s, and is gone. Though as I recall there's a mention of a pre-costume "mysterious stranger" saving an airplane, an incident that Lois has become obsessed with investigating before Clark comes to Metropolis.