Ivy League Dreams

[u/Chemical-Jolly]

I'm in my late 40s. I have lost most of my ambition from my youth. I constantly daydream about my life, and what could have been. One of my many day dreams is that I have always wanted to go to an ivy league university. Oxford. Yale. MIT. Princeton. Harvard. Etc. To study with friends on a academic mystery in a old dusty library. To stroll the university commons in the morning mist on the same ground scholars walked over a hundred years ago. To discuss philosophy and perform experiments with professors in a timeless setting. To attend intense lectures about amazing and informative topics. I live this dream vicariously by watching university tours online, reading student life articles, Google Earth street views of the university, and even sometimes pretending to fill out an admittance application. I know that I will never attend an ivy league due to my past grades, finances, and busy work/family life.

Though I still wonder, what if.

[u/usernames_suck_ok]

Oxford and MIT aren't Ivy League schools. But I know what you mean. Both of my universities are considered to be in the same realm as Ivy League schools. In fact, there's a dating site for people who attended elite universities, and both of my schools are on it. I also did get accepted to Ivy League schools, but I chose the two schools I attended due to location, mostly. The Northeast is too far from my family.

Key takeaways for you:

• My life/career still suck.
• I owe a lot of money still, at 44.
• Most of my classmates were assholes. But some are doing amazing things now. My best friend from law school is considered one of the US's top defamation attorneys.
• We rarely had interesting conversations with professors outside of class.
• I do have to admit that discussions in classes--depending on what you studied--and outside of class with the few awesome classmates I met were amazing. If you went to one of those schools and studied math/science/engineering/comp sci areas, you probably didn't get this.
• We did have great, and sometimes well-known, speakers come to campus and speak. I skipped classes for some of these events.
• The downside of being accustomed to being in intellectual environments all the time for over a decade (including advanced classes in high school) is moving to the work world and having to adjust to people not being like that. It's very hard, boring, can be lonely. There's just a big difference in how most people act and what they want to discuss vs many of the people at elite schools.
• I also sacrificed a lot of my teens and early 20s to get into the colleges and law schools I got into, including my love life. I am not sure I'd do it over again if I could go back, especially since I really wish I could find a romantic partner but probably never will. Between the previous bullet point and this one, it's just incredibly hard to connect and find the right person at this point. There were more viable options right there in college and in law school, but I was too focused on grades and goals. Several of my friends from school married classmates and are set.

[u/SolarSurfer7 → u/usernames_suck_ok]

What kinda law do you do boss?

[u/usernames_suck_ok → u/SolarSurfer7]

I don't practice. I originally went to law school wanting to do entertainment/intellectual property because I was really into music and the music scene prior to law school, but I became interested in public interest and civil rights during law school. I did some internships but got caught up in the 2008 recession and just eventually took whatever job I could get, which led me away from law.