Trisha Cummings (the ‘Real World: Sydney’ diva we’ve named Mc-Crunchie, after she made a ignorant comment to a McDonald’s worker) put her journalism degree on hold to film this show and is now catching a lot of backlash for her comment about her experience speaking with someone who cannot speak English clearly.

The whole situation is interesting. We all tune in every week to watch just this … Watch as people are thrown into a house with strangers who may have completely opposing views. We then get to witness how their views of the world change throughout this experience. Remember when we watched in San Francisco as Pedro tried to teach Puck about his story of a gay man living with AIDS. Or Julie the Mormon in New Orleans who took a chance to live in the ‘Real World’ house and lost her position at her university. Or Mike who came to the New York house with an awful opinion of African American culture and left with Coral as a close friend.

We learn by watching these house mates learn and experience different views. That’s the amazing part about this generation — we have places to learn outside of a classroom and even our own life experiences. Sometimes reality television (which has gotten somewhat of a bad rap) can really teach us how people across the U.S. view life.