Living in the Real World

 

Red sky in morning, sailors take warning! Real world views of nature in contrast!

What is the “real world” for the empowered volunteer? I have personally been in a few groups where the idea of emerging into the real world was viewed as many things, exciting, growth oriented, scary and to be avoided, or simply as another stage of development.

Students, both high school and college face this phrase in their emerging from the student atmosphere and entering the next stage of their life. I don’t know how many times I heard while going to college that we were not living in the real world.

Dr. Phil McGraw in his powerful book on real world living, Life Code, The New Rules For Winning in the Real World writes on what he calls BAITERS, which stands for backstabbers, abusers, imposters, takers, exploiters, and reckless members of the individuals you encounter. This list really helps organize the people you can encounter who do not wish you to succeed.

I will have to say, in my experience Dr. Phil’s book on these “real world” people is dead on correct and I really wish I had been able to read his book way back when I was in college! Because you can and often do encounter all of these people types in your college experience and in my case I encountered many more of them in my graduate college experience too. I would encourage everyone who plans on interacting with people to read and digest his book so they can minimize the negative impact these people have on your life and career.

The college experience can prepare you for the real world is my point here, at least in how to effectively deal with people who do NOT have your best interests in mind. 

Another group which uses the “real world” us versus them mentality is the military. Somehow it is felt that those in the military don’t live in the real world. That is of course nonsense, but it is a mentality which is often felt and even promoted by some people, many of who I would label BAITERS from Dr. Phil’s book!

I repeatedly found in my military career examples of BAITERS who not only not have my best interests in mind but they did not have the team’s (ship, command, or whatever) best interests in mind either. How to deal with them once you are their latest target would have been incredibly helpful if this book had been available.

Another place where the “real world” is supposed to not be interwoven with is volunteer groups, NGO groups, activists groups, and other special interest groups. 

I don’t think that the volunteers in the Peace Corps or volunteers in the Rotary helping to vaccinate against infectious diseases are somehow disengaged from the real world. They are simply working on a focused part of the real world, where they trade back and forth between specialties and then widen their focus when they are not doing a specific world task.

 

Some people have claimed that those who live in academia after tenure no longer participate in the real world.

They put it even more impolitely, saying, “Those who can, do, those who can’t teach”. Wow, is that a really harsh way of labeling teachers and those in the profession of education? We heard this and related themes of distorted reality in the last presidential election from the party that is even today really pressuring students to carry a much higher percentage of the cost of higher education than those in the past have done. Many say this is to further erode the opportunities of the middle class, but that is yet to be shown in the data results. Personally I like data to sort the truth from the emotional responses, but that is just me.

Politics is another lofty area where the term real world applies in different meanings depending on your party affiliation. Real world Tea Party doesn’t equal real world GOP or real world Democrats unfortunately. Sorting these conflicting issues for the political volunteers or even the citizen voter is demanding and also important for America’s future.

In my next post I will explore more of the real world from the volunteers perspective and how to minimize or dampen the negative impact some BAITERS would provide for the new empowered volunteers who are trying to make the world a better place.