I think I'm going through a pre-midlife crisis.

Or, perhaps it is a post-quarter-life crisis. Or a post-pre-mid-pre-post-life crisis. Whatever it is, I've been thinking about my age a lot lately.

This is almost certainly due to the fact that I am attending university and find myself interacting with people who are generally 12 years younger than me. I am a "mature" student. If you went to university as a "traditional" student, you'll remember that the "mature" students were "totally uncool."

Many moons ago, when bison still roamed the plain, I made an attempt at being a traditional student. Once, in a politics course, I found myself on the receiving end of a lecturing rant from one of those mature classmates who apparently hadn't been alerted to the fact that more than 25 years had passed since 1969.

"In my day," the old hippie blustered, "We cared. We wanted to change the world. Your generation doesn't care about anything more than yourselves."

At the risk of insulting the all-important Baby Boomer demographic, I must admit that my natural urge was to go find a tire iron to hit him with. I didn't do that, of course, because I didn't care about anything. Instead I stared at the wall and made a solemn vow that I would never, ever be like that guy.

Then, last week, I was talking to one of my fellow students and made a reference to Stevie Ray Vaughan.

"Who?" my classmate asked.

"Who?!" I stuttered. "Seminal blues artist Stevie Ray Vaughan! Guitar legend Stevie Ray Vaughan!"

"Never heard of him," she said.

And then I blurted out: "What is wrong with your generation?! Have you never heard proper music?!"

Well, that's what I intended to say. Thankfully, the conversation was being held in Welsh and I got locked up trying to remember the word for "generation." This slight delay gave me a chance to re-examine what I was saying, and I managed to change the exclamation to: "What is wrong with ... my watch?"

I'm not sure what my classmate thought of my sudden exasperation with a timepiece, but at least I had narrowly escaped the mature student trap. I had managed to avoid suggesting that people my age or older are in any way superior. We aren't. We've simply had more time to formulate arguments that we are.

That conversation, meanwhile, has stuck with me. I am old. Or out-of-place. Or both. Or, at least, that's the way I feel. It's a mood that hits me toward the end of every semester. The finality of an academic season causes me to reflect on what I have done, what I could have done, what I should have done.

It starts with things scholastic -- lamenting the lack of better research on a paper, and so on -- but soon spreads to cover every aspect of my life. I am overwhelmed by everything I am not.

I often wish that I could go back in time and re-live my life, not making all the mistakes and boneheaded decisions. I tell myself that if I had done this, said that, and invested in those, my life would be perfect now. The problem with this kind of thinking is the assumption that if I were to re-live my life, I wouldn't make other mistakes.

Sure, I might not have moved to Fargo 10 years ago, but then I might have continued dating that girl who thought Burger King was a British franchise because, "you don't have kings in America, do you?"

Indeed, the curse of time may also be a blessing. I don't really have to worry about stuff that's already happened. I do worry, but I don't have to. The only real concerns are what is happening and what can happen. And these things are mostly within my control.

This causes a tremendous amount of stress, of course, because I feel the pressure of my future self. Somewhere in the yet-to-be there is an older, grayer me smacking his forehead over all the stupid things he's done. And I want to save him this frustration, but I feel I can't because I haven't yet done whatever it is that he's upset about. Or maybe I am doing it right now, but I don't realize it.

I worry that this is how I will be for the rest of my life: worrying about the past, worrying about the present, worrying about the future, worrying that perhaps too much of my life is spent worrying.

The solution is obvious, I know. I need to simply get on with living my life, playing an active role in my own existence rather than second-guessing and lamenting. My grandmother doesn't sit around fussing about things like this, and no doubt that's part of the reason she does not age. Indeed, her knowledge of text speak (LOL) is greater than mine; she is getting younger.

So, if I don't want to feel so old, I need to stop thinking old. That's easier to say than to do. Fortunately, I've got time to work on it.

Chris Cope lives with his wife in Cardiff, Wales. His column appears every other Tuesday.