Life is Difficult
There have been many over the years who have used the phrase "The Real World" to describe everything that is not of high school or college. The Real World is that which lies beyond, as if, somehow, the walls of academia are a bastion guarding the inhabitants from the concerns and toils of the world beyond.
But high school is part of this world, and the lessons learned in these years are applicable in every way to the future life we will lead. No one, for example, has to tell a high school student that the world is difficult.
Today, the world has entered the academy. Students must fight through the same difficulties encountered in the world around them, including violence, drugs, peers, sexual temptations, expectations, work, and routine. Those who learn these lessons well seem to do the best in "The Real World" . . . which is, of course, the world they already know by heart.
M. Scott Peck begins his mega-bestselling book of the 1980s, The Road Less Travelled, with these three words: Life is Difficult. John Mayer sings about a high school realization that there is no such thing as a real world, just some things we have to rise above. How well we rise, and how quickly, says much about the lesson we have learned during the teen years.
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