Real World Hits Hard
  by Richard Roeper

A Grad's guide to making the transition from college.

In the movie _St. Elmo's Fire_, a group of recent graduates was
having difficulty adjusting to life after college.  To wit:

   - Demi Moore was snorting up enough cocaine to keep an NBA team happy
     for a year.

   - Emilio Estevez was an obnoxious jerk named Kirby who had a crush on a
     doctor.

   - Mare Winningham had a rich father who kept handing her money.

   - Judd Nelson and Ally Sheedy were struggling to make a go of it in
     their 22,000 square foot loft.

   - and Rob Lowe had to contend with the fact that he looked better in
     rouge than anyone else in the movie.

Life after College sure was tough for these kids.

Almost all college graduates have difficulty adjusting to the Real World.
To help you through this period of transition, the following guide
illustrates some of the basic differences between college life and the Real
World.


WORK:
  When you were in college and working in Bob's Gutbuster Pizza Place, it
was OK to miss a day here and there.  All you had to do was call in and say
"I don't think I'm going to be able to make it in today, because I had 147
beers last night and I'm not sure what town I'm in."  Real World bosses
have a tendency to frown on such behavior.

CREDIT CARDS:
  Take a good look at the signature on your Real World credit cards - It's
yours.  Not your parents' signature, but yours.  This means at the end of
each month you'll get the bill.  That's right - you'll get the bill and
what's more, you'll be expected to pay it.  Frightening, isn't it?

FOOD:
  It's no longer permissible to subsist on the four basic food groups -
beer, pizza, potato chips and snickers.  You're going to have to learn
about supermarkets, convection ovens, and yes, brown-bag lunches.

LAUNDRY:
  In college, you can survive for four years with a wardrobe consisting of
two sweatsuits, a pair of jogging shorts, a pair of tennis shoes and seven
T-shirts in assorted colors with assorted stupid messages on them.  In the
Real World, you will have to contend with buttons and pockets and zippers
and ties and shoes that hurt your feet.

COLLEGE LOANS:
  College loans are really neat - while you are in college.  In the Real
World, you will have to start paying them back.  That means a $61 check to
cover that 89-cent Coke you bought back on April 14 of your sophomore year.

VACATION:
  In college, you go down to Fort Lauderdale for spring break.  For 10
days, you act like a sailor who's just been let out of the brig after 11
years of solitary confinement.  Real World people have much more
sophisticated vacations.  They let Club Med take them to places like
Aruba and St. Tomas, where they learn to limbo and mix pineapple drinks
while standing on their heads.

HAIR:
  In college, it's OK to go with the Brian Bosworth Look.  In the Real
World, it's best to stick with just one color, preferably something that
can't be described in terms of NEON.

GUM:
  Your last day of college is your last day of Hubba Bubba banana-flavored
bubble gum.  In the Real World, only hookers and shortstops are allowed to
chew bum.

THE SOAPS:
  In college, it's perfectly acceptable to arrange your class schedule
around "All My Children."  You can even talk to friends about Erica as if
she were a real person and not a one-dimensional fictional television
character.  Nobody in the Real World knows or cares or wants to hear about
the soaps.  If you persist in talking about them, you will be asked to go
back to graduate school.

DATING:
  In college, you could meet a girl in the library, walk back to her place,
watch "Late Night with David Letterman", give her a cherry lifesaver, kiss
her goodnight and the next day you could tell people that you went out on a
date.  Real World dating is a very complicated and painful process that
entails shaving, showering, making reservations, driving an automobile and
spending wads of money.

BOOKS:
  Real World books don't have reviews at the end of each chapter.  This
means that you must pay attention to the whole book.

TESTS:
  If you get a 97 on a test make sure that you brag about it in college,
but don't ever mention it once you've hit the Real World.  If you do,
people will think you are a pathetic has-been.

PARTIES:
  If you want to have a party in college, all you have to do is post a
notice on a bulletin board, place your jumbo speakers in the window and put
the keg on the porch.  In the Real World, you have to invite specific
people and you have to give them more than five minutes notice.

MTV:
  Does not exist in the Real World.

A VACUUM:
  Nobody in college ever vacuums.  (This is because hardly anyone in
college has a rug.)  In the Real World, people vacuum at least once a week.

THE TELEPHONE:
  Now that you are out of college, it is not acceptable to call people
collect.

MAGAZINES:
  Cancel those subscriptions to National Lampoon, Mad, Playboy and
Cosmopolitan.  It's time to start reading New Woman, Time, Forbes and the
New Yorker.

JEWELRY:
  Beer can tabs, rubber bands, leather chokers and gumball machine trinkets
must go.  Anything you wear around your wrist or neck must contain some
kind of precious metal.  Ankle bracelets are against the law in the Real
World.

INTERIOR DECORATIONS:
  In college, you can use cinder-block shelves, overturned milk cartons,
posters of Heather Locklear and the sofa that was featured on the cover of
Cosby, Stills & Nash's first album, and you'll probably win an award for
best decorated apartment.  In the Real World, furniture must match and be
made of wood and other genuine materials.