This post could also be known as The Things They Should Have Taught Us In High School but I can't agree on who's precisely to blame here, so I'm blaming us all.
I'm not saying that the things we're taught in high school and college are useless - some of those things are crazy important to know. But we're definitely not being groomed to be fully functioning adults by the time they let us out on our own at around age 22, if not at a younger age.
In a perfect world, these are the courses they should have made us take.
Doing Your Taxes 101
Internships: A Modern Slavery
The Ins and Outs of a Mortgage
Cleanliness and You: The Study of Personal Hygiene
The Convergence of Love And Sex
Interpreting Family Relationships
The Normalization of Drug Dependency
How To Date Many People Before Committing To Marriage
Adult Onset Body Image Issues
Balancing A Work Life and A Social Life
The Wonders of Travel
Career Change in Unstable Economies
Understanding Divorce
Kindness: A Gentle Analysis
Healthy Meal Planning
The Struggles of Depression
The Realities of Single Parenthood
Body Maintenance
The Glorification of Alcohol
Finance Organization
The Exploration of Alternative Lifestyles
Managing Unemployment
Dealing With Emotional Unavailability
The Importance of Debt
Child Development (yes this exists, IN CHILD STUDIES PROGRAMS, but everyone needs this course)
The Effects of Grief
Maintaining A Savings Account
Elderly Planning
If we were exposed to any of these classes growing up, who knows what kind of a society we'd get to live in now. I'm just saying.
A math teacher once told me why he thought kids would benefit from taking math (and I'm talking about the more advanced math that gets taught in the later years of high school). He said something along the lines of, "We don't teach it because you need to know this stuff later. We teach it solely because people find it difficult. You're going to encounter difficult things in your life and it ultimately comes down to how you're going to choose to solve them. Whether you give up or try the best you can to figure it out, that's always up to you. That's why math is important."
Now maybe you think that's a lame thought, but I really loved it and still do. Though, we'd have all definitely benefited from any of those courses I listed above. When I'm running the world, you better be damn sure those are getting taught. MAD TAUGHT.
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