There are a lot of things I miss about my college days. Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of these pathetically nostalgic people who constantly looks back to "the best years of my life?. In a lot of ways, college was hard, and in even more ways, my current life is rewarding. I have a great job, a wife who loves me, a nice house, and two beautiful children. Still, there were a lot of great things about being a student too. Although I was often strapped for cash, I managed to have a lot of fun. I dated, parties, traveled, and had time to engage in one of my greatest passions: learning. Yet one of my favorite things about being a student was getting student discounts.
This might seem like a trivial focus, but it felt nice to have people reaching out to me simply because of my age and station in life. I'm not talking just about student academic discounts either. It is true that it is easy to get a student discount on computers, software, and other education related stuff. In the college town I was living in, if you showed your student card you would get 10% off at practically any place that sold academic supplies. Student discounts, however, went much further than this.
The best were the student travel discounts. Nowadays, although I earn quite a bit of money, traveling is still more difficult than when I was a broke student. Back then, I could go anywhere. I could get a student travel package to Europe, save up all semester, and live cheaply while hiking around some of the most beautiful countryside in the world. The travel companies knew that college kids love to travel, so they would make student discounts available. If you were willing to stay in youth hostels and eat cheaply, you could have fun and adventure almost anywhere. It really is a great activity for the carefree and young.
Of course, even when I wasn't engaged in great adventures around the world, I could still benefit from student discounts in my spare time. Around town, almost every cultural event had discounts for students. You could go see a movie, go to the theater, or see a concert and get discount rates. A lot of the companies knew that students were notoriously cheap. Even those with money would not come unless they offered the students discounts. As a result, we all got great deals.
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