I spent nine years of my life going to university campuses. In fifth and sixth grades I was taking science classes, in seventh to ninth I was finishing my high school math requirements, and the last four years I was taking regular college courses. From one day a week in the beginning, to full time study the last year, every week during the school year. I haven't really been on campus for, oh, four years.
Walking through MIT's Infinite Corridor today I realized how much I missed it. The colloquia on obscure topics, posters with jokes only a field theory physicist would appreciate, and all those fascinating devices, lights blinking hypnotically. The corridors plastered with display cases and bulletin boards, always trying to teach you something, push someone's idea, yellowing diagrams of chemical reactions an anonymous grad student tested decades ago.
For all those nine years, I never really fit in. I was always too young, doing something else, there for the wrong reasons. Even at the end my classmates were probably four years older than me at least, and at the time this difference felt huge. I wonder what it would be like to go back again, as a student. I think I'd feel right at home.
What do you call nostalgia for something that never happened?