I miss school. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying I miss classrooms or tests or even the occasional hot teacher. And more precisely I don’t miss school in general. I guess I really should say that I miss college. Anyone who has attended university can probably attest that the line between elementary education and secondary education is the size of the Grand Canyon.

Once one exits the collegiate world, major changes in mental development occur. No longer are we required to prove our knowledge by way of tests, quizzes and term papers. No more tedious work, right? Not quite. The “real world” (a term we all grew to detest because of our elders patronizing use of it) requires us to prove ourselves in live-action, a real-consequences social construct. Imagine playing Grand Theft Auto but instead of getting away with hitting that blue-haired grandma with a baseball bat, we go to jail for assault or even attempted murder.

The real world doesn’t allow us to beat grannies or avoid going into work with the same ease that college allowed. I can’t even tell you how many nights I spent up late with friends, talking, playing video games, partaking in vice and sin. By morning our brains were fuzzy and our cheeks were sore from laughing so much. But that 9:30 French class snuck up on us far too often. Why would anyone want to meet three times a week, early in the morning, to learn a romantic language that we all would only use at night to coax a lover into bed?

But there were those good things about college. I attended a small liberal arts college with fewer than 1,500 students. We had the distinction of being that college that all of the really smart, quirky and geeky hipsters attended.  In other words, we were the social outcasts in high school whom no one really liked. Imagine over 1,000 of those kids, an isolated campus and more books than we could ever read. We were even in the athletic division that prohibited any form of athletic scholarship or incentive. Our jocks weren’t even that talented, but they were smart (most anyway).

In such an environment, free thought and radical logic reigned supreme. This is what I truly miss about college. Reflecting back on my time in college, the most memorable moments weren’t the successful research papers or times in the campus café. The best memories were the late night talks, the heated classroom debates, the ideas.

We could sit around a dimly lit room with our friend’s latest art work hanging on every available hook, peg and ceiling tile. We just talked. People from all around the world attended my school. We fostered an environment that encouraged big thoughts, free expression and open discussion. Once attuned to such a world, it was rather easy to live in.

I was the type of student who never really had to try hard in class. I didn’t have to read the class texts; somehow I knew what they meant intrinsically. My ability to write made creating a better than average research paper a one-day venture, unlike all of my friends who took two weeks to write something of equal or less value. A year after graduation I would find out I was the bane of my social circle because of the lack of effort I put forth. I didn’t have to try as hard as them, yet succeeded in being cunning, smart and quick when it counted.

I knew that being able to side-step the work was just a sign of being different. It reminded me of junior high school where I was in every honors program possible but showed an acute capability to handle complex math problems quickly and correctly. Soon I was pushed to join the school’s UIL scholastic competition team for the division called “Number Sense”. The basic principle of the discipline was learning how to solve complex math problems without using the typical formula for arriving at the correct answer. We were the math-shortcut kids. Not surprisingly, the teacher for our little group was also my regular math honors teacher as well. She inadvertently taught us to upstage our peers by having a mental cheat sheet for cutting corners; thinking about the big picture can sometimes make taking the small picture a little bit easier, faster, and smarter.

But back in regular 8^th grade honors math class, we weren’t allowed to use this knowledge. We were to turn off the big picture and focus on “showing our work”. You see, number sense is all about solving things in your head. You had to be quick, linear and always-right. In honors math though, this lack of proof was unacceptable. How can you have the correct answer without proving how you got to it? No one can go from A to C without B! It is impossible.

The same problem exists in the line between college and the real world. If you were taught to dream big in college, to expand your horizons, to think outside the box, then you know what I mean. That “box” that you are supposed to think outside of is really the real world. They didn’t exactly make that clear in my pop culture class.

The real world is really just 8^th grade math class. It is that place where you sit in a room with 20-30 people, half of whom you hate and/or are scared of, the other half you are “friends” with yet are afraid of as well. Someone is always watching us, grading our work, trying to make us fit the world’s social mould. We are supposed to want to be normal and “show our work”. We have to prove we learned something and that we aren’t just inherently smart. Those of us with a different way of thinking can’t just rise in the ranks by rules of nature. In the animal kingdom “survival of the fittest” rules, no such rule exists in the human’s supposedly superior real world. There is no survival of the smartest or promise that simply being capable will get you ahead.

But in college anything was possible. Our eyes were wide-open and the welcome exchange of thoughts, experiences and future perfects kept us optimistic that we could hold on to such a life once in “the box”. But all things must come to an end or whatever simple finale cliché fits the bill. We have our friends in the real world, true. We meet people from all walks of life. But can we honestly expect to find a tight-knit group of friends who are all wild, smart and articulate? Much less all in the same dorm? Personally, I’d rather not get that close with anyone else who lives in my apartment building. I’ve become closed off to such experiences. Real life isn’t like college and it isn’t like they portray it on Friends or Will & Grace.

I prefer the real world despite the absence of such experiences. I have become Pavlov’s dog. I enjoy the treats people give me when I react appropriately and complete a task when a superior rings the bell, or sends me an email. I revel in my successes because it means somehow I have denied my own impulse to not “show my work”. I go from A to B to C and grit my teeth because I know I could still skip B all together. But the sense of independence with a tinge of fear is still intoxicating to me. Sure, I don’t have late night conversations with ten of my closest friends about everything from Plato to blowjobs. I miss it but I wouldn’t give up that feeling of finally becoming a part of that grown-up place. That place that we were always told we were too young to understand and that things didn’t work the same way there as they did in our little young minds. I’m a part of the real world now. I show my work.