The Best of What’s Around: The real world: Life after Harrisonburg
The light at the end of our undergraduate tunnel is not as bright as one might think
By Craig Finkelstein, staff writer
Posted on January 11, 2007

For those of you who share my dread of embarking on what looks to be the final frontier of college, I warn you that the future prospects are grim. The real world is fast approaching, and from someone who has spent a considerable amount of time there, I must say it is something I am planning to avoid like those handing out needless leaflets on the commons.

Having worked for the federal government every break since high school, only making copies and getting coffee when it suited my own interests, I can honestly say that a typical day in the real world is instead more like a day in “Dante’s Inferno.”

It starts with the morning commute, a painstaking process of one or more hours from the posh communities of Northern Virginia. Despite my ensuring fatigue from a terrible night’s rest, I always look forward to watching the hoard of buffoons literally push and shove their way onto the packed trains in order to get on the car first, as if the Metro cars don’t come every two minutes. You would think they were all rushing to some great fountain of youth, but no, it’s just to rush to get to a job most people hate anyway.

If you are lucky enough to get to work, you must make sure you stop by everybody’s cubicle and pass along a “good morning,” for if you don’t go out of your way to do this, you will most certainly not have one. 

After wasting away most of the morning regaling in meaningless storytelling, there is sure to be at least one pathetic fight amongst employees of the office, because real, professional adults should definitely bicker about the most trivial issues that do not affect their work. My favorite of all was the knockdown drag-out I witnessed between two co-workers over the luxury of an office with a window, because having a window to distract you is a sure sign of achievement. So-called professionals engage in some of the most elementary behavior that I have witnessed off a playground, and I guarantee that most of the waste in government is due to adults acting like children in their place of business.

Accountability is a concept seemingly absent from our government. No, I am not talking about the corrupt politician, I am talking about the average co-worker who takes three-hour lunches, is sick once a week, and who somehow spends more time conserving than producing. If this type of co-working atmosphere appeals to you, the real world is just for you!

Now, may I introduce you to the wonderful process of the bureaucracy? Bureaucracy is in place in the real world to basically ensure that you take as much time completing inane tasks that prevents you from doing real work. In the real world, the average employee is not given the benefit of the doubt for their abilities, but instead must run every little decision by at least 100 other unqualified individuals who themselves are too busy to care otherwise but still will push aside your tasking for something else more meaningless.

Your day ends with another commute resulting in the same pack of geriatric wolves dashing from the Metro in order to speed out of the parking lot first. After 12-plus hours working and commuting and having to go to sleep in a couple of hours to wake up and do it all over again, you come to realize that JMU might not have prepared you for this so-called excuse of a real world, but instead delayed the process that would eventually come to be what many people pass off as a life each day and sadly must endure for the sake of obtaining an under-deserved paycheck every two weeks.

Craig Finkelstein is a senior international affairs major.