For graduating students, April is the season of goodbyes. Everyone hates goodbyes, especially when the ones in question are more adieus than hasta la vistas, but we say them anyway, in one way or another. We wave to teachers as classes come to a close. We pack our student apartments into boxes to move into new ones. We hug our friends and board planes, trains, and automobiles for faraway places that some call-drum roll please-the “Real World,” where people don’t go to Korova on Mondays (though we haven’t done that since first year, we swear) and don’t wake up at three on Friday afternoons and call it morning. These people have nine-to-five jobs, cars, apartments not paid for by student loans or parents, plans for a babied future, and what society at large considers a progressive life.

But the question to ask ourselves is: to what, exactly, are we saying goodbye? When we leave our McGill bubble, are we abandoning it for the “Real World”? Are our lives here lived in a fantasyland where fairies complete our homework as we dance beneath snowflakes in winter and among drum circles in summer? Are we really just overreacting when we become stressed by exams, or lonely when we spend Tuesdays pulling an all-nighter?

I say no. How is our McGill bubble not a real world? Our lives here unfold in a world as real as any other-just another side of a multi-faceted universe we will never see in its entirety. What we are saying goodbye to is our world, one of greasy breakfasts at McGill Pizza,  one of too many hours spent in our cubicles at McLennan, of too much PBR, and of too little time spent with the people who make this world incredibly real.

Call me quixotic, but standing at the top of Mount Royal looking out at the St. Lawrence river and breathing in crisp still-wintry air is-according to most philosophical arguments-based in reality; it is the Real World that strikes me as a fiction. MTV founded a reality TV series twenty years ago that co-opted the title The Real World but the ensuing 26 seasons turned out to be anything but a world based in anyone’s version of reality. The other realm we call “The Real World”-this rat race in the big cities, where the aim is to out-strive those around you, that many a graduate will flock to upon receiving their diplomas-is equally deceiving.

Even in our McGill bubble, we’ve caught onto the fact we’re in a recession. Most of us, if we’re employed at all, will end up in a career that does not immediately relate to our undergraduate degree. Unemployment in our age bracket is at an all-time high. If Quebec is anything like our neighbours to the south-which, with the Charest government’s proposed tuition hikes, it’s trying to be-85 per cent of graduates will be moving back in with their parents. Social security stats suggest that the Baby Boomers have stolen our thunder. If this is the real world I have to look forward to, I’d rather stay in this one, thanks.

Yet since we can’t really stay here indefinitely, we have to come up with a good way to say goodbye when we do. Since it’s my time, I’ve decided to say goodbye a little differently. I’m going to leave without saying “goodbye” at all, but more along the lines of an optimistic “au revoir.”­ So au revoir, oh Lower Field, with your budding green grass; hasta la vista, Arts Building, with your billowing flags;  and  ciao for now, Leacock lobby, with your samosa and bake sales … until we meet again.