College culture, students think, is not the real world. Over and over, they assert that they live in the [insert the name of your college here] “bubble,” segregated from the trials and tribulations of “the real world.”
Is this true?
Does even it matter if students think it’s true? Sociologists speak about “the social construction of reality” and “the real world” seems to be one of those constructions. So what kind of cultural work does our common-sense conception “the real world” perform? What happens when students make a distinction between professors and real people? For answers, click the button below.