Every week, I scan the local arts listings, hoping to find something interesting to do. When I stumbled across a listing for a Thursday evening performance of the one-act play “Flight,” adapted from a novel by Sherman Alexie, I knew immediately that I wanted to go. Because Alexie is a terrific writer and I’m always telling myself I should go to the theater, “Flight” seemed like a can’t-miss proposition, a chance to do something fun and different and interesting.

“Flight” was adapted for the stage by Wynn Handman of the American Place Theatre in New York City, and presented by the Performing Arts Center at the University at Albany. It’s an intense and compelling yet often very funny work, the story of an American Indian teenager named Zits who has spent most of his life bouncing from foster home to foster home. As I walked out of the theater, I couldn’t help but wish that I was back in college, because in college, arts events are cheap and plentiful, and there’s never a shortage of stimulating, thought-provoking entertainment.

Of course, I didn’t actually take full advantage of these opportunities when I was in college, and if I were to travel back in time to my undergraduate days, I think I would make better decisions about how to spend my time.

For instance, there was one weekend my freshman year when all of these great things were going on. The filmmaker John Waters was giving a talk and screening one of his movies. Jerry Greenfield, the co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, was playing in an alumni lacrosse game and handing out free pints of ice cream. “I have a lot to do this weekend,” I thought. “I think I’ll skip John Waters, and go get some ice cream.”

Clearly, this was the wrong decision. Maybe it made sense when I was a freshman in college — Yeah! Free ice cream! — but as an adult I really wish I’d gone to see John Waters. At least I managed to catch Allen Ginsburg when he read at the bookstore.

Not long ago, a friend of mine suggested that we could have found more meaningful things to do in college than drink and go to parties. “I could have built a house for Habitat for Humanity,” she mused. “I could have helped make the world a better place.”

I had to admit that she had a point. During my senior year, I went to cheap pitcher night at the inn every Monday, quarter beers every Tuesday, early ’80s night every Thursday and TGIF — a happy hour sponsored by the bar in the student union — almost every Friday. Then there are the parties I went to on the weekends, the hours I spent playing horseshoes and drinking beer once it got warm outside, and the fact that one of my housemates decided to start brewing beer shortly before graduation.

Of course, all of this seemed perfectly appropriate at the time.

I was a college student, after all, and college students drink and go to parties. And we did have great fun, although the college party I attended during my 10-year reunion — my friend Nachie’s old college band, Bippy, was playing a gig there — made me seriously doubt my decision-making ability during those years. The house was loud and crowded and dirty, and eventually my friend Dave and I fled to a bar filled with grouchy alumni like ourselves. It made me wonder whether, viewed through the prism of adulthood, the parties we threw in college would seem similarly pathetic. They seemed pretty awesome when we were 21, but of course that was back when we were idiots.

I guess it’s pretty safe to say that I missed out on a lot more than John Waters when I was in college. I missed other filmmakers when they came to town, and authors, and theater and dance performances. I saw some of this stuff, but not as much as I should have, and in the end, I can’t help but think that sometimes college is wasted on college students.

But it wasn’t a total wash.

I’d never heard of Sherman Alexie until I was assigned to read his wonderful collection of short stories, “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven,” for a contemporary fiction class I took in college. The book was delightful, and I proceeded to read a couple of his later novels, “Reservation Blues” and “Indian Killer.”

So maybe I did learn more in college than how to play darts and the easiest way to pick up a keg. I discovered writers, and attended concerts — everything from the jazz pianist Ellis Marsalis to the punk-ska band Mephiskapheles — and even watched dance and theater from time to time. Maybe, as an adult, I’ve just truly learned to value the arts, and to not take them for granted.

Still, old habits die hard.

A group of alumni who worked on my old student newspaper are organizing a February journalism panel on campus, and I’d been debating whether to go, since northeastern Ohio isn’t exactly the most pleasant place on earth during the winter and my chances of driving through a snowstorm on the way there are probably greater than 60 percent. But then I received an e-mail from a friend that made the whole event sound irresistible.

“I’ll buy the first round at the inn,” he said.

“Well,” I said. “That seems like a can’t-miss proposition.” And I knew immediately I wanted to go.

Foss Forward makes a weekly appearance in print, in The Gazette’s Saturday Lifestyles section.