Midnight Pub

The School of Athens 2021

~edisondotme

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.

I used to talk about environment and nature with the entomology and biodeisel initiative club.

I'd talk politics with Young Americans for Liberty.

I'd discuss existential angst with the philosophy club.

I sang campfire songs with the outdoor adventure club.

I made friends with an Altgeld ringer who showed me how to play the bells.

I dicked around at the student machine shop.

I talked about computing and geography with the members of the GIS club.

It was the Greek concept of leisure in it's truest sense. Such a thing is hard to come by as an adult.

Otium

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!

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Replies

~inquiry wrote:

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....

~tskaalgard wrote:

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.

~mellita wrote:

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.)

~shiloh wrote:

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!