I assume by this point that most people have played the insanely popular board game “The Game of Life.” Designed by Reuben Klamer and Bill Markham and released by Milton Bradley.

The game was intended to be a fun variation on the original game that was created by Milton Bradley in 1860, but it says more about our actual lives than the creators ever intended.

The game starts you off with an immediate choice; to either go to college, or go straight into your career.

While it’s your choice if you want to win the game, you need to go to college. If you do go to college, you need to pay of course, but you do get to draw from a career pool that will earn substantially more money than if you skipped college.

Correct or not, the game puts forth the idea that if you go to college you will make more money than those who don’t.

The next step in the game, whether it comes after you finish college, or right away, you have to draw a career and a salary at random from a deck.

This is where the game says the most about life, as it portrays your success or failure as based entirely on luck. If you are lucky, you will get a great salary and will have very few obstacles on your path to win the game. If you are not so lucky, you will have to get lucky if you want to make a comeback.

Nowhere in the game does skill play any role at all in the outcome of the game.

The next major event in the game is when the game forces you to stop to get married to someone. The games manual states, “When you reach this space, stop even if you have moves left. Take a LIFE Tile and add one people peg to your car. Then spin and move again.”

The message that the game delivers is that you must conform to the monogamous relationships that are most common in our society, mainly the ones bound by the law.

Love, in “The Game of Life,” is not free to manifest in the many different ways it does in the real world, but rather is set to a rigid guideline.

The game continues as you cross the board, having children and changing careers until you reach retirement, when all of the players count up their money and the person with the most money wins.

You could have won a Nobel Prize during the game, but if you didn’t make the most money, it doesn’t matter. In the end, “The Game of Life,” says that the only thing that matters is moo-lah.

“The Game of Life” sets a very uneasy precedent for how life should be. It creates an expectation that rules, social guidelines and the pursuit of money are the only way to live.

Life cereal, on the other hand, says something different.

It’s  bland and tasteless, but if you put sugar or cinnamon on it, you make it your own and it won’t judge you for it. Sugar or not, with skim, one percent, two percent, whole or soy — Life cereal won’t judge you.

Live your life like Life cereal, not the game.

Alex Bertsch is the opinion editor for The Dakota Student. He can be reached at [email protected].