Why I Miss College

This is a post dedicated to the nostalgic feeling I’ve been having about my college days.

College is the time of your life for many of us who go through the traditional college experience. College is indeed a lot like high school with two exceptions and one of them can be overcome. The first exception is that you take harder classes, and this can be overcome if you decide to take easy classes or “easy” professors.  Like the true professor’s kid I am, I took classes because I wanted to “learn” so the exception of harder classes still applies to me. The second exception is that unlike in high school you can’t escape people “for the night.” In college, you live with everyone – your friends, enemies, and frenemies – which means you have to see all these people all the time.

So, with hard classes and a less than perfect living situation for about four years, the “real world” tends to be a “welcoming” breath of fresh air. All that glitters however, is not gold. I guess I’m just longing for the feeling of familiarity I had during my college experience. Or maybe it’s the fact that I’m still in the “it’s a rough life” phase of the post-graduation period. Whatever it is, I miss college and it’s not for the parties or that I miss living around a lot of friends (though I do miss them a lot). Here are my  three main reasons why I miss college:

1. I’m really good at school! I don’t only like learning, I enjoy taking classes and engaging with the professor and students in an academic setting. In the real world, you learn differently because you have to. You learn “on your job” and you pick up street smarts (or at least you should). But given the lack of discipline many of us have, we are not forced to learn like we did in college so we don’t. Although I try to keep up with reading and learning new things, it’s just not the same. Do I miss homework, all-nighters and finals week? Well not really, but it was part of the package, and truth be told some of my best memories were the hustle and bustle of getting that assignment finally done…the night before. Oh, the good old days.
2. I miss my professors and mentors I will say that I am very lucky that I have Nicole, (the founder of this blog) around me constantly and I literally shudder to think what my life would be like if I had not met her. I miss the dean of the Business school who is the main reason why my school’s business school was as big as it was.  I just miss being around all the knowledgeable people all the time who always seemed to have the time to pass on that knowledge anytime, anywhere.
3. I miss running into random people I know (and don’t know). Living in Chicago, you would think I’d be fed up with running into random people but it’s not the same thing like it was in college. When I was in school, I would see those random people on the weekends and then see them during the week and the contrast was just well, funny to say the least. It still amazes me how different many of us were over the weekend compared to the week. Different but still the same…and I loved it.

I know what you’re thinking – somebody get this girl to grad school! And maybe that is in my future, maybe even my near future, but it won’t be the same. College was the time of my life. And even though I believe that somewhere in this dark post-grad period, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, I think I’m still allowed to be nostalgic, am I not?

What do you miss most about college? And what ingenious advice, if any, do you have for me to get over my post-grad blues? I’d like to know!

Happy Thursday everyone! Probably going out for a drink tonight for a pretend thirsty Thursday – in memory of those good ol’ college days…