Fogies forget college part of real world

Watch out, people - the "real world" is continuously lurking and we'd best be careful.

For those of you not in the know, the "real world" is some fantastical place that students have never been to. It exists, sure, in some vague way that is beyond our limited sensory ability, and it is something older people truck out when they have no argument.

"It's alright, son, when you're in the real world you'll understand."

Thanks, pops. That was insightful, delightful, to the point and full of explanation. I sincerely believe you now.

No! Honestly!

The "real world" is basically a full-time job for a living, from what I can deduce, and the majority of students have never done that.

I have, and let me tell you that it really wasn't that informative. Taxes, housing and bills are all things lots of students already pay for from a variety of sources.

What else has the "real world" to teach us, pops? Apparently, it's that as you get older you get narrow-minded and the world should never change. God knows how the "real world" dealt with the abolishment of slavery, introduction of the telephone and Arnold Schwarzenegger - all changes from some fictional norm.

The real world (note the lack of quotation marks) consists of roughly 6 billion people living in all manner of lifestyles. From the Serengeti to the Sahara to the Savannah River, humanity has a very large real world.

The best place to learn about the real world is at university. I respect Bell South immensely for its role, but being a telephone line repairman is the tiniest sliver of the real world one can imagine, despite the fact that people make a living out of it.

Then again, learning Farsi, C++ or being an expert on logical fallacies produced by journalists are also all part of the real world, whether you have a job related to them or not.

Going to university is not preparation for the real world because we are already in it. Lessons on responsibility are vital to learn, but that's about being an adult, not living in that mythical "real world" inhabited only by crotchety gits. Stupidity happens to everyone all the time - ask Mel Gibson or Michael Richards - regardless of how old you are or what you do.

University is also not a job, like some people assume. Instead, perhaps students hold a special niche in the real world: that of educating themselves to be better people first and for practical reasons second.

The vast majority of students will enter the job market with a varied collection of skills and, hopefully, knowledge on a jumble of topics ranging from philosophy to geology, and this is wonderful, whether they have worked for a living or not.

Because students, after all, are part of the real world as much as anyone else.