The next year

The next year in college is going to be probably my final year in college for a long time and the year that I will finally enter the real world.  I am planning on entering the "real world" in 2014, but I have been in the real world somewhat since 2009.  Actually, I am in the real world the moment I am outside the world of academia - the real world is on the internet.

Of course, the school world is a place where you see your peers, and at the college age, it is about the 18-24 year old age group.  The 18-24 age group is the time when you are in high school, but still sitting around with a high school like environment - it seems like it is the next step past high school where everyone is in a boarding school like environment, but it has the same concept of high school.

I have been in the community college lifestyle and it looks like it is more "real world" than the university life style, but eventually I am going to enter the actual "real world."

I had a sample of the real world during this summer - I have been in the apartments by myself for part of the time, and it seems like it is a different world than the college world.  The teenage-college age just blends in and it is very hard to find someone that is in the teenage-college age.  There are a lot of people that are in their 30s having kids and there  are a lot of elderly people, and little kids.  This might be a population dynamic showing that two generations - The Baby Boomers and Generation Y are dominating the real world.  The teenage age is probably a smaller part of the population, even up to the college age and they are not important.  There was a lot more teenagers about 15 years ago than now - it looks like that world was loaded with teenagers and college students, but now the teenagers had grown into the adult population.  The kids of Generation Y are also dominating the real world - there are lots of little kids.

Facebook is not really targeted for the teenage audience anymore - actually the Facebook age are in their 30s and 40s now, when they were in their 20s and 30s 10 years ago.  It is just a shift in the population.

It looks like there is a established pecking order when I am out in the real world, and I am not important.  I am the bottom the barrel and it is hard to find some people that are of my own age, especially of the area that I live.  It looks like you have to start liking people that are in their 30s and 40s in the real world, and start going along with their interests - really you can develop the same interests such as music when you are in your teens up to the day you die.

I think in the real world you need to find your group or your interest, or you are not going to fit in.  I can't wander around trying to find yourself like you are a teenager; you need to have some type of established interest or identity.  There are many types of people out there and I need to find a category - there are people that go hunting, fishing, and snowmobiling; there are people that like music and travel, blah blah blah. I can't just wander without many goals.

The peer world can be fun  - you can find people that you can relate to but when they start getting adult interests, you can relate to any age group.  Any age group can like music, any age group can like art, etc.

I think I am going to fit in the real world and I am going to like it once I get a established interest that the "grown up" guys like, and I do have some interests that the grown up people like.  I will start liking the person more for the age, he is just a human that has been on earth a little longer.