I kept picking up rides at my alma mater this week. Finals were finished, and all the college kids were packing up and leaving town. Some years, cab drivers don't get much play at the university, but I must have gone there ten times in two days.

My last ride on Thursday was a rich white kid from San Diego. He was a nuclear engineering student going to the coast for a friend's wedding. He was dressed in an outfit I've worn on many occasions: blue button down shirt, blue jeans, black cons. I joked that nuclear engineering still had a shot in this country, but an engineering degree should get him a job somewhere. He didn't laugh and just said his dad already worked in the field and could get him a job. I also mentioned that my favorite part of school was the end of the semester. No one would ask me those questions ever again. He didn't agree or disagree. Ah, kids today. Still made fifteen bucks off him.

It was fifteen years ago when I graduated college, and I wanted to get nostalgic. Think of those good times when I didn't have a care in the world, right? The only problem was I just couldn't do it.

I didn't particularly enjoy college. I studied too hard, worked too much, and took life way too seriously during those years. The phrase Angry Young Man would be fairly accurate for me.

If you would have told me fifteen years after college I would be married a year, with an almost three year old daughter, and drove a cab for a living in the same town I got my degree, Angry Young Me would have said 'That figures.' Angry Young Me might have asked how his novel was received, and I would have said 'I liked your second one, but no one else did.' It's probably best that Angry Young Me and I never really spoke.

Do I miss college? Nope. Do I regret not taking this course or changing my degree again or not going on to graduate school? Nope. I was a weird kid, and I grew up to be an eclectic adult. Without any real guidance, I've been winging it for a long time now. Every time I look back at any time of my life, I'm glad I survived those times, but nothing is nostalgic enough for me to pine for the good ol' days. In some ways, that's kind of sad. In other ways, it means that life always has the potential to improve.

Fifteen years. That's about as many years after formal education as I had with it. Small town public education and state university for me. After I graduated, the world embraced something called the Internet which made most of my ways of learning antiquated. I was archaic as soon as I was eligible to work. As many paths as I could have taken, I went off the trail quite soon after school, and I've been wandering in my mind ever since.

Still, there were all of these kids this week: crying, hugging each other, loading up cars and waving good-bye. Nostalgia for a youngish old cabbie? Almost. The only problem is that I can remember as many lousy things from the good ol' days as there were happy times.

I will be back in the cab next week, and all the kids will be gone for the summer. I will take people from here to there, and sleep or read when nothing is going on. Never looking back. Waiting for the next ride. The next opportunity. The next phase of life. Where can I take you? Where do you want to go? You got it. And off we will go.

Chris Jungle went to school until no one else would pay for it.