> *That's* the real world.

For the second post in a row, I agree with what you say, except that what you say is any kind of rebuttal or contradiction of what I've said. The real world isn't so easily summed up. Like I said, some people start mean and stay that way.

But some people *do* get slapped by the real world when they get out of the sheltered world of their parents, when, no matter what happens, dinner and a roof and a dry bed are waiting at the end of the day. You can't throw a temper tantrum to get out of paying the rent. And while it takes a pretty serious thing to get kicked out of high school, any college worth its salt will kick you out without a second thought if you're not taking your academic responsibilities seriously. It always impressed me the way UNH worded this in its rules: if your GPA falls below whatever amount after any semester "including the first," you were gone. Despite that, I saw a lot of people who were practically shocked when the college followed through. For the first time, they were learning that life is serious. A lot of them even had good parents -- it's just that some things you only learn by experience.

Having learned that old ways don't work in the real world, people set about trying to figure out what *does* work. You and I both pointed out, in different words, that some people merely adjust to different but equally deplorable methods. But many others ingest life lessons constructively, learn through experience what's important in life, and genuinely change. There are people like this everywhere, probably more than not. I know I straightened out in a lot of ways since high school. Perhaps not as dramatically as some: last year, I worked for a guy who is so laid back and congenial now, I was astonished to learn that as a teenager he was doing the mailbox baseball thing and ripping off parking meters.

Nobody's arguing that there aren't nice people in high school or nasty people in college and in the workplace. But it's just silly to say that experiencing the real world for the first time doesn't change people. Well, ok, it doesn't *magically* change people. There's nothing magical about it.