It is indisputable that life after you graduate college is different than life when you are in college. Of course it’s different, it’s a whole new stage of life with new challenges and new perks. When you graduate you’ll have more responsibilities than ever before. The most obvious of these is that you’ll have to find a “big boy or girl job.” Then you’ll have to find somewhere to live and pay rent and I’m getting anxious just typing about these things right now.

Although you definitely have more at stake after college than you do while you’re in college, I do not believe that when you graduate you are entering “the real world.” That takes away the meaning from everything that you did in college. In calling life after college "the real world," you’re almost saying that life during college is some weird, alternate universe. But here’s a shocking revelation, you don’t get a key with your diploma that opens up a portal to the “real world.” When you graduate you’ll get your diploma and the sun will set later that day. Then the next day the sun will rise. You’ll wake up and move on with your life. You may enter the professional world, or you may join the Peace Corps, but you won’t enter the “real world” because you’ve been in the real world all along.

College is a time to expand your horizons and although the end goal is to graduate and find a job, I don’t think that that should be the only goal. There will never be another time in your life like college. Embracing college and what it entails could change your life.

You will never again be surrounded by so many people who are similar to you like you are now. You will never have access to so many free speakers and educators. You will never get to do multiple extracurricular activities at one time ever again. You will (probably) never live within five feet of all of your friends again. You will never again stay up all night studying for finals, then take a break to watch a Disney movie and laugh so hard at a commercial that you cry again.

College is a unique time and a real time. The experiences that you have and the activities that you do matter. You’ll remember them for the rest of your life, the good, the bad, and the ugly alike. Embrace your surroundings while you have them and don’t chalk them off to fantasize about the “real world.” You’re in the real world right now. Make it count.