What to do about my incessant longing for life like it was in college?

Personally, going back to university as a mature student totally killed it for me. I physically can't do the 'up till two then in for lectures at nine' any more - I briefly tried to run with the eighteen year olds and gave up. Not only that, but when you listen to those people who are basically younger versions of yourself and your friends you end up realising the truth - you weren't intellectual, or changing the world, or awesome, you were just drunk and talking bollocks. And no-one else realised because they were completely wasted and only listening to themselves. So basically a harsh re-assessment of reality, as opposed to nostalgia tinted glasses has made me re-appreciate my grown-up life now.

I am not at all joking when I say this: life will be like this again when you move into a retirement community, if you move to the right one. Until then, not sure. I think about it to, and so does my husband. He's always lamenting that no one "stops by" our house to hang out. This is not a good answer :(

As society demands, I continue to move on, with a steady job, bills, marriage, a house, eventually family, and whatever comes after that. Fuck the demands of society. Who says you have to settle down, buy a house, etc? A close friend lives the back of his motorcycle shop in a creepy industrial part of town. The rest of the warehouses are filled with other bikers, mechanics, builders, etc. It's very much a community, with everyone valued for their particular contributions and skills. One guy had cat/emissions/smog questions so he walked over a few shops to the guy who does a lot of smog work. My friend was working on my bike when one of the neighbors called needing a pair of hands to help fix his door after someone tried to break in to the neighbor's shop. I got sent to help fix the door while my mechanic friend fixed my bike. We have grand plans of frying up doughnuts in the turkey fryer out in front of the shop and sharing them around the neighborhood. Sounds like you're hungry for a community as much as anything. So go find one.

Find a good apartment building. I lived in one in Seattle (Lower Queen Anne) where all the doors opened on to a nice little courtyard with a picnic table and some chairs. The apartments were kind of small-ish but it didn't matter much. Most people pretty much just left their doors open when they were home and hung out in the yard as the common area. It was a great place to bring your dinner out, have a couple of beers and shoot the breeze with the neighbors. We were all in and out of each others' places, watching movies, having improptu let's-go-out-to-a-show nights, whatever. I met my wife there. I think modern adult life isn't like the college days because we aren't as forced to interact with our neighbors all the time. Our houses are all designed these days to hang out inside or in the back yard. Privacy is nice, but can be isolating and boring. It's not as easy to hang out with someone on the spur of the moment if you have to make sure they're home, put on your shoes, get in your car, and GO to their house. Drawback of close community: having to be considerate of everyone else and put up with everyone else with respect to noise, occasional grumpiness, etc.

Watching a room full of 50 year olds get their party groove on at the frat house on alumni weekend will show you how not to try and keep the college days foremost in your mind. Seriously, I think the key is to keep doing new and better things. College was fun for the responsibility-free reasons you identified -- but as an "adult" you can do other, way more awesomer things. It's only the best time of your life if you don't do anything very cool afterward, you know?

Not to be a downer, but at least you have those memories. That's pretty special. I don't regret many things, but I've never experienced anything like what you describe, and I regret that.

Going back to visit is a good reality check. Also, you can create *some* of those things in your current life, via picking your neighborhood carefully, reassessing how much of the rat race you want to buy into, creating a meetup group for your interests, investing in friendships...

Great question, one that I think about a lot. For me it's not just college but a few other periods during my life where everything was just right (or at least, just right as I remember it.) Ups and downs come and go, and while there's nothing wrong with relishing all of those great memories, it's important to recognize the new ups when they come around. They won't be just like college, but if you watch for them you'll enjoy that same "You know what? Life is pretty damn sweet right now" vibe. But re: the things that made college specifically fun/special, I think all of the comments about "Community" are spot on. In college you're automatically made part of a community (the college itself) and you're thrown in with a bunch of people from all different places and backgrounds. Your horizons are expanded, and you hopefully make some fast friends with people you would never have met if not for the structured environment in which you were introduced. Our generations (Gen-X, Gen-Y) are prone to feeling adrift in the "real world" - once you leave college, that's it as far as community goes; if you're an extrovert and land in a nice neighborhood with other extroverts, then you might recapture some of that sense of camaraderie and enjoy the random pop-in or front porch conversation... but for the most part (gross generalization ahead), people leave college and get jobs where they spend 8+ hours at work, 2+ hours commuting, get home and watch TV for 2+ hours, and go to bed. So what happened to our civic sense of community? Here's the thing: you know all those community organizations our grandparents belonged to, like the American Legion/VFW/Lions/Elks/Odd Fellows/Grange/Masons/Eagles/Moose etc? They serve exactly that purpose. The problem is that most of the baby boomer generation rejected all those groups wholesale, which is why we grew up assuming that they're all clubs for old people. The younger folks who joined in their 30's are now the old folks who got left holding the bag when none of their kids joined. Younger people are joining all of these groups in increasing numbers, though, precisely because so many of us have that feeling that something is missing. I joined the Masons a few years ago when I began working from home, because I knew that I was going to go out of my mind without some kind of social outlet... and as foreign as the idea of joining a group for the express purpose of social interaction was to me at the time, now it seems like the most natural and sensible thing in the world. What you get is that structured sense of community (both in terms of your town, and the organization you've joined) and a place where you get to meet all kinds of people from all walks of life who you might never have met otherwise. Just like college you'll hit it off with some people right away, and meet others who instantly rub you the wrong way. If you join a healthy group, you'll probably find that they usually have their building open at least one night a week for members to go hang out. There are occasional generation gap issues as you might expect, but for the most part the older generation is just thrilled to see new people joining and getting involved after having to run things themselves through so many lean years. I wish it had occurred to me to join such a group years ago, but it wasn't until I learned that a 25 year-old coworker at my last job was in the Elks that it occurred to me that anyone under 70 might belong.

I think that you need to pin down the few specific concepts you miss - flexibility, sociality... And figure out how you can build them into your life now. Being an active alum has nothing to do with this. There are certainly things that are bette now - more money, adult relationships, fulfilling work... Make a list.