by Shannon Bradford

Created on: February 05, 2009   Last Updated: February 26, 2009

College students nationwide must face down the steely glare of reality once their school years hurtle to an end, and the transition into the work world can be a bit hairy. Success ultimately depends on a delicate mixture of personal motivation and luck, but good universities take steps to make this transition easier, with mock interviews, career counseling, and enormous databases of job offers from all over the world. With tools like these at their fingertips, jumping into the real world should be a piece of cake.

But is it really so easy? The truth is, nothing can prepare a student for the real world except the real world itself. Counselors can sing about career options, job offers can even be aligned on a silver platter for the student to peruse at will, but it will remain obstinately surreal until the diploma is in hand and the 18-22 age range does not comprise 95% of the local population.

College offers students the chance to escape from reality, at least in small ways. With a surplus of student activities, a literal explosion of kids in a similar age range, and a frothing arena of intellectual (and otherwise) stimulation, it's hard to imagine much else while still encapsulated in such an environment. The skills learned at college are essential- after all, business students do benefit from participating in market research with the local companies, and communication students can never give enough speeches - but these lessons are not the only important ones.

More than anything, college is an essential step between padded youth and stark reality. It allows students the chance to find themselves, engage in their own lifestyle, figure out socialization patterns that work for them, discover and develop talents, expand intellect through access to viewpoints that might not be available in their hometown life, and breathe the sweet air of new freedom. All of these experiences contribute in a huge way to preparing a young adult for the real world, perhaps much more than being able to calculate the standard deviation of a randomized sample. It's this internal growth that contributes more to a student's success beyond the confines of college. A 3.7 GPA says nothing about how someone will react in the work force, but the college experience guarantees that they've had the necessary social and mental cultivation that will allow them to tackle the scary world ahead.

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