Back in my high school days, having pseudo-intellectual discourse with people in 10th grade just didn’t do it for me. Neither did waking up at 6 a.m. for classes. To top it off, I’m from Jersey, so I had to deal with a certain type of crowd … eh.

When I felt a yearning for college away from it all, I used to talk to my older, “sophisticated” college friends, and for some reason, I thought they would provide me with some enlightened hope for the future. They would tell tales of mid-day naps, just two classes a day and all sorts of debauchery — it seemed too good to be true.

I associated college kids with the all-knowing intellectual elite, but unfortunately, I was misinformed. Talking to those “college elite,” I would come across topics about world events, expecting intellectual discussions and get “lollz, huh?” type responses.

How could this be? Do these college people not own access to any form of the media?

This made me realize college is far more of an abstract concept than I would ever understand until I was enrolled. Now that I am in my second year, and even when I was in my first, I realized that college is a unique world of its own, with its own separate rules. While finding a college, we go on a quest to free ourselves from our small bubbles and seek to find a world of diversity. Paradoxically, when we’re in our college world, we are extremely sheltered.

Back in the day, even in seventh grade, we knew more about world events than we know now. Of course, when I say “we,” I am not addressing everyone. But for many people, college is a period of life equivalent to soft, cushiony Pampers.

We pretty much escape the law — you wouldn’t be partying half as much if you got caught each time you had a Keystone (which is a really shitty beer, by the way). We sleep all day and we lollygag around Wal-Mart. That’s just Pampers.

But dude, you gotta know something about what’s going on outside your baby-oiled ass. For those of us who do not read newspapers, go online to questionable CNN.com (I mean, it’s better than nothing), or have your parental units spoon-feed you world news, because we know shit. It’s pretty freaking sad.

It is not cool to not know what is happening in your own country (wouldn’t want to push it with saying the rest of the world, cause, like, why should we care? Lollz!).