How Retirement Is Like College (And Why I Love Both)

First, some background 🙂 . Until retirement, my freshman year of college was the best year of my life. The years after leaving college and before I retired didn’t really come close and I was curious to investigate why. Now in retirement I’m the happiest and healthiest I’ve ever been. So let’s see why that might be and what retirement and college have in common.

Time Is My Own

One of the things that I loved about college is how my time was my own. In college I had deadlines and classes, but I picked when the latter would be – so much so that I engineered having every Wednesday free of classes at one point. It was like a mini weekend in the middle of my week 🙂 .

I napped when I wanted, hung out with friends at all hours and studied, wrote and read when the urge hit me. I chose my activities based on the natural rhythm of my days and my mood. And in retirement, I do the exact same thing 🙂 .

If it’s a beautiful day and I feel like it, I head out on a long run, chill with friends, hit up a pool and then plan my next adventure. If it’s raining and I’m feeling more chill, I might sit on the couch and read all day with a smile on my face. I’m able to do what I feel like doing instead of adhering to a rigid schedule like I did while working or even in high school.

80% of my college time was free to do whatever the fuck I wanted and having to do work for the other 20% could slot into my life when my motivation presented itself. Now I do the same in retirement. I might have to do adult stuff like laundry or grocery shopping, but that takes up a minuscule amount of my time and I can do those things when I feel like it instead of trying to stuff it into my week and often just not doing it as a result of how constantly tired I was while working.

Stillness

In college I would lay around for hours with my partner not doing much of anything. Talking when we felt like it, lounging in the sun, just breathing and experiencing the world in quiet stillness. Our days overall were leisurely and there was time to do literally nothing. I didn’t realize how much I missed that when I started working and as a result running haggardly all over NYC.

The busyness of trying to kick ass at a job, maintain a relationship, and sustain a clean home, build friendships, plan trips, clean and generally be an adult didn’t seem to leave time for anything but recharging by doing something mindless like watching a TV show I’ve seen a million times before.

Now I’ve started doing nothing again in retirement and when my partner takes a break from his work from home job, he sometimes does nothing with me and it feels just like college. Today we laid side by side while I watched the dappled sunlight dancing on the wall of the living room. It was so peaceful. I’m happy that the time I have now is enough that I don’t feel the urge to stuff every minute full of activities and can just live.

Constant Community

I grew up in Atlanta, GA where a friend that was ‘close by’ was an hour drive away. As a result, I had some weekend sleepovers but rarely saw friends during the week outside of school. In college, I had friends a few feet away from me at all times in our dorm rooms or at the farthest, across campus, which was a short walk away.

There was always someone around to hang out with and this happened naturally instead of as part of a scheduled thing you have to pump yourself up to leave the house for after a long week of work. It was simple, effortless. Luckily I’ve found that the same is true in retirement, especially since I have become friends with so many retired and time-flexible people from this amazing community! There’s always someone to hang out with even in all the random cities I live in around the world. I don’t have to wait until a rushed Sunday brunch so get some friendship in my life.

Constant Learning

I also loved college because it taught me how to think and analyze instead of memorize (like high school) and I loved learning new things. That’s why I enjoyed my time at Montessori so much 🙂 . Similarly I now have the time and energy to dive into anything that strikes my fancy. If I see something interesting or that I don’t recognize, I can stop what I’m doing and research it instead of filing it in my mind as something to look into “when I have time,” which never happened.

As a result of this new freedom to learn, I’ve become a lot more knowledgable about the world around me from learning about birds to local wildlife and even other languages 🙂 . Learning makes me happy and being able to follow my curiosity wherever it takes me is a wonderful gift.

Or Is Retirement Better Than College?

TWIST 🙂 ! After thinking about it more and writing all of the above, I’m going to declare that retirement is indeed like college, but better. One reason is because I have money now 🙂 . Unlike my college self, I’m not stressed about splitting a restaurant bill evenly if someone ordered more than me. I’m also not stressed about my uncertain future after college and trying to “make it” and getting a “good job,” which are all in quotes because what in the fuck does that stuff even mean???

In addition to the friends I was able to see in college, the fact that I’m a full-time nomad that travels the world means that I have seen my loved ones more in the last 3 years of retirement than in the rest of my life combined. Traveling the world and following the sun (and avoiding winter 🙂 ) is another lovely perk I didn’t have in college.

Conclusion

I set out to discuss the similarities I saw between my beloved college years and my current lovely retired life and in doing so realized – retirement is even better than my college experience 🙂 And that’s pretty wild for me to internalize. The happiest time in my life up until that point has been pushed aside for an even better time.

What did you enjoy about your education experience?