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The thing I miss most about college is being surrounded by well educated people my age. It was a whole *city* of interesting people who *did* things. Everyone had an abundance of free time to pursue their interests and learn and socialize with other people who shared those interests, no matter how obscure the interest.
There was a club for everything and each club had it's own unique milieu. The meetings were interesting and the social events were lively. I can't think of a better way to fulfill those top three slots of Maslow's pyramid.
It was the Greek concept of leisure in it's truest sense. Such a thing is hard to come by as an adult.
The internet is one such place, of course. I love reading all your thoughts, musings, and introspections here at the Midnight, keep it coming! Carpe diem!
While I enjoyed it to the point of subsequent regularly-scheduled, fever-pitched reminisce, I know I might have experienced so much more had I been raised in the direction of recognizing its possibilities/potentials.
That said, oh to have just one more chocolate shake from a particular machine in a particular cafeteria....
I miss this part of college often. When I graduated and moved into full-time employment, my coworkers (and increasingly also myself) don't do much, since work crushes our souls.
I can't tell if I'm a particularly picky person or if my university was worse for cultivating the livelihood you describe, but it sounds just like the sort of thing I wish I'd gotten out of my college experience. In all likelihood, I just wasn't looking in the right places.
I was lucky enough, at least, to forge a few very solid friendships. But I have to admit that myself and my friends share very few passionate interests...at some point I gave up taking people at their word that they were interested in something! Not a good position.
The reason was, it felt like I kept meeting people who professed great love for some interest or another, but they had no interest in discussing it, ever! And often enough they devoted shockingly little time to it. (Maybe it's because of my interests? I was trying to hang out with artists.)
I'm in college now, and I absolutely agree. I found a few guys who are willing to hike the trails near campus with me early in the morning, work out, sing sea shanties, and then eat breakfast as we discuss politics or philosophy or whatever. It's a great experience, and very fulfilling, even though it technically checks off none of the boxes on my to-do-list. At home, I never really met anyone else who liked those things, or enough of those things that I wanted to hang out with them. I see the same sort of thing here though. I love seeing the lens each person puts on their everyday life. Like, the little stories that are written in a whimsical or philosophical way here. New perspectives, I think, keep the brain sharp.
Cheers!