My aunt has had a hard time getting my cousin to visit colleges for various reasons, so when we were up to see family in Pittsburgh this past weekend she brought him up to see Pitt, and we all went together and went on the tour. Man, it was awesome! I was ready to sign up then and there!
Isn’t it a damned shame that when you’re actually doing the college thing you don’t appreciate it? If I went back today in a traditional dorm-living parents-paying kind of way (like my actual undergrad experience) my god what I’d do! For one thing, I’d go to class, like, all the time! I’d join every damned club they have! I’d play a sport! Ten sports! I’d study abroad! I’d use all those library resources I didn’t understand when I was an undergrad and didn’t ask about!
Seriously, if they had at the end of the tour asked me, “So, do you want to take this one-time opportunity to turn back the clock and do undergrad over again?” I’d have done it in a heartbeat. That’s the last time you get to make friends that easily, the last chance you get to pick up new interests for free or learn a lot of things at all (I mean, I guess I COULD find a fencing team as an adult, but it’s certainly not as easy as it is in college!) God, remember all that free time that wasn’t devoured by a 9-5 job? Even doing work study was such a non-time-drain compared to real work with a real mortgage. Hilariously, particularly given the way I moved into dorm rooms (bring the Sherpas), it even seemed liberating to pare down to half a dorm room’s amount of stuff.
It’s exceptionally funny because when I was in college there’s no way in hell I’d have gone somewhere like Pitt. My alma mater had about 700 people in it when I started and we didn’t quite hit the goal of 1000 by the time I left. It was the opposite of a big university in almost every single way, and honestly if I had it to do over again I don’t know which experience I’d choose, but I can tell you I’d have turned my nose up at Pitt at the time. (I think I may literally have - I think they were one of the schools that offered me a free honors college ride after National Merit.)
Anyway, I just got all excited and warm and fluffy feeling about it. I know somebody’s going to say “Well SOME PEOPLE had to work twenty jobs and this and that and the other thing”, which isn’t really the point - isn’t it on the one hand wonderful that we have this incredible experience to offer our young and on the other hand totally wasted on them?
I would dearly love to be able to start college again. Particularly if I could know then what I know now. (First thing I’d tell myself: just because the cafeteria is all you can eat doesn’t mean you have to eat so much.) I didn’t have a lot of spending money - I was on scholarship and my parents could only help a little, as I had four younger siblings - but I managed to get a part time job working for the college.
I’m taking classes part-time and I sorely wish I could go full time and enjoy all that my college has to offer. Sailing! Yoga clubs! Bonfires! Football games!
I pissed away my chance when I was younger and stupid.
I really enjoyed college, but I also feel like I missed a lot. I wish I’d been better prepared academically and that I had been more willing to go out and do sports and so on. I was allergic to exercise at the time. Even with a job and bills to pay, there’s so much available at college that you just can’t get later on.
I also wish I’d been able to afford an Interrail pass; I would have gone in a second if I could have.
Honestly, the biggest thing is probably how easy it was to make new friends and meet people. You’d see a flyer for the Widget Club, you’d go, and you’d meet all the people in the Widget Club who were there to meet other widgety types. Now if I went to the Widget Club I wouldn’t even know how to talk to people and I’d probably spend the whole widget evening alone while the widget cliques did their thing.
That’s something I do wish I could experience, college fresh out of high school with my parents paying for things. That’d be nice.
I mean, I’m glad I did the military thing, it has helped me a lot. But because I’m older and I have bills and such, when I’m not in school I’m working just to make ends meet.
I wish I had time to do clubs and sports etc.
Hmm…I’m going to make a conscious effort to squeeze some of that in.
Chalk me up as another who pissed away college when I was young and dealing with it was easy. Now I’m back part-time, keeping up a 4.0, actually enjoying most of my classes and shaking my head at the 18-20 year olds who spend class covertly sending text messages behind their bookbag (I’m sure the instructor is fooled) rather than paying attention.
Ah, well. I can’t do it over again but I can do it right the second time. Only shame of it is that I have “grown up” responsibilities now and too many years on me to get engaged socially.
I’m gonna go against the grain and say there’s no way I could do college over again. I can’t take the hangovers.
Seriously though, I balanced academics with my social life pretty well. There are a few things I’d do over, but those have more to do with relationships and friendships than anything else.
I wish I could have gone to Penn State at age 18 and relatively stable, instead of age 16 and mentally shattered. Going to the University of Toronto for my master’s at age 21 and in a bit better condition, and having the fun I did there, is enough to convince me that given better circumstances Penn State might have been all right.
As it was, my four years at Penn State were like a car crash. I remember going there, a bit of being there, and waking up at the end, but almost nothing of what actually happened. Kind of sad that the biggest memories of the place I had are of the library basement. It’s a shame as most fellow Penn Staters I know enjoyed being there immensely.
I don’t think I could do it again, but I was 25 when I started. I worked multiple jobs and carried overloads every semester and did the extra-curricular activities - I’m amazed I survived. I just don’t have that kind of stamina these days. When I was there, I just wanted to graduate and get a job, because I knew life would be easier. They tried to get me to go to grad school, but I fled to the relative joy of being a corporate peon.
I wish I had done the full residence-living thing. I laughed at it at the time - you want me to pay HOW MUCH to live in a room with someone who will talk on the phone all night and throw up on my floor? I commuted from a town not too far away instead.
There were a lot of good things about it - I learned that real life is getting up at 6:30 most mornings and getting dressed, not stumbling downstairs in your pjs ten minutes before class begins. Because almost all students at my university were commuters, I didn’t spend four years in a ghetto of 18-22-year-old middle class white kids. I saved a ton of money (I actually acquired savings during undergrad, rather than debt), and I got excellent grades.
But I didn’t make many friends at all, and I didn’t get to do any of the fun activities the OP mentioned! When I’m looking for jobs these days, I always think it would have been handy to have acquired some actual hobbies that could count as experience doing anything other than writing essays.
I don’t know. I loved college and had lots of fun but I always had this looming batch of readings and papers and thesis work that I could never seem to finish. Now, when I come home from work, I’m done. I might have plans later with friends or clubs I’m in (they exist outside of college too), but no deadlines or other nerve-wracking craziness to deal with.
However, I just graduated 6 months ago and I currently work at a university. Maybe in a few years my memories will have faded and I’ll dream of the days of college … and then I’ll apply to grad school!
I’d do college over again, but not for those reasons. I’d go to all the “how to get a job after college” and “how to write a resume” seminars that I dismissed. And yeah, I’d join a few more clubs and spend less time alone in my dorm room playing video games. 'Cause right now my life mostly consists of work, then coming home and playing video games until I go to sleep. Or, on the weekend, coming home after work and playing video games with a few buddies.
Heh, I definitely didn’t appreciate college when I was 18. So much so that I dropped out after my first year. Now at 23, after a few years’ experience in the “real world” I am happy to say I’m back in school and it’s a whole different experience. Now that I am beginning to understand the real value of education, and actually want to be here, wow, it’s a much more wonderful experience.
Heh, yeah, I’d love to go back to college, but for exactly the opposite reason that Pollux Oil said. I’d love to have all the money in the world, and just go back to college to just learn stuff with no pressure of it dictating my future career options and just learn stuff, and then come back to the dorm and hang out with everyone and goof around. I miss free time =(
Though, the state of Virginia has a law or something that stated that if you’re over a certain age, you can have the ability to take college courses for free, if you’re retired i think. This was told to me by a 65 year old + guy taking my Crusaders and the Crusades History class, which was REALLY a ton of fun… So I guess I just gotta take care of myself until then, and then totally just sign up for a bunch of classes!
I got a second Bachelor’s degree in my low 40s, although it was an urban commuter school instead of a live in. It was worth it, despite the pressures of a FT career, mortgage, rotten marriage, and raising a teenager. The best part was having enough knowledge in the field from experience to be able to intelligently question the professors.
One of my lottery fantasies is to do it yet again on a residential campus. College students have all of the rights and privileges of working adults, and none of the responsibilities.
Or, on the weekend, coming home after work and playing video games with a few buddies.