There seems to be a prevailing myth around campus that college isn’t the “real world.” College has become this safe little bubble where everything’s made up and the mistakes don’t matter. The truth, which is a terrifying thing, is often much harder to admit — college is the real world. Welcome to adulthood, students.

As much as we like to pretend we are still kids with acne, raging hormones and no consequences, the fact remains that we are adults — though we may still have acne and definitely still have raging hormones. The choices we make now will undoubtedly color the rest of our lives. If that doesn’t qualify as “consequences,” I don’t know what does.

What is this real world we are so afraid of? I would argue it’s both big and small. First, it’s as simple as the world we enter when we are no longer children. We have had our proverbial eyes opened and now see the world for what it is — both ugly and glorious. We don’t just wake up one day, decide to leave childhood and enter adulthood. It is a slow process that’s all about growing up.

As for the bigger implications of the real world, they connect to the smaller. Growing up means growing older, confronting our very mortality. Each step we take is another closer to death. Sorry to be so grim, but part of being a grown up is realizing you are not invincible.

This is where I get frustrated with the term “real world” and saying college is not the real world. First, the real world is not a frame of mind or a stage of life. It is our everyday. It is what we live and breathe. To trivialize the world we live in by saying it only exists outside of our current reality is not only unwise, but unfair to our own selves. If we don’t accept the reality of being adults, how can we justify our day to day actions?

Are you in charge of your own life? Do you make your own decisions? If so, then you’re an adult. If you are not in charge of your own decisions, it’s time to stop denying your own responsibility. I am not talking about worrying about things you can’t control. I’m talking about little things — like doing your homework and not skipping class. As adults, these small gestures add up and can easily influence, if not directly decide, your future. This is why college qualifies as the “real world,” no matter how overused the term may be.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t exactly going toward a, forgive me, “YOLO” situation. I am not arguing that you may as well party it up now. I am saying that it’s time to leave Neverland and start thinking about the future.

Our decisions affect where we will be tomorrow. We are in the real world today, right now, in college.

Tomorrow, we will still be in the real world, though it will be a new sort of real world. Our decisions today decide if that world will good or bad. Again, there are plenty of factors outside of our control, which also can be hard to accept. But college isn’t preparation for this mythical real world — it’s the first step on our own in this real world. Just as we had to take our first unhindered and unassisted steps as babies learning to walk, so we must in college.

We may still be learning, but that doesn’t make it any less real.

Kjerstine Trooien is a staff writer for The Dakota Student. She can be reached at kjerstine.trooien@my.und.edu.