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SETTING THE STAGE To begin this chapter on a theory that is very likely to be brand new to you, it will help to establish some common understandings. Let's do this with an example. If you are reading this book, you are probably a college student. If so, have you ever wondered why you are in college? This thought might have crossed your mind if you read in the newspaper about computer-savvy high school drop-outs making big salaries working for dot. com companies. Perhaps you wondered why you are here when you heard about a friend with little college experience who has been making good money teaching English in Japan, or when you learned that 1 year of college expenses would fund perhaps 2 years of travel around South America or 3 to 4 years in other exotic parts of the world. Such musings become particularly meaningful during the end-of-semester crush of final exams and term projects, or when you find out that, once again, the university has fouled up your fees, class schedule, or both. In short, you may ask,“Why am I here? Why aren't I doing something else?” Students' answers to these questions are quite varied. Even so, if we were to look carefully across a wide range of answers to questions such as these, we would discover important underlying characteristics or themes. You might want to see these themes for yourself. You can do this simply by taking a few moments to answer the question “What does my being in college mean to me right now?” Go ahead, make a list of answers. To really test the truth of what I have to say, ask some friends to list their answers to the question, too, and gather all these answers so you can …