Finances v.s. Fate by Brianna
Briannaof Oak Harbor 's entry into Varsity Tutor's August 2015 scholarship contest
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Finances v.s. Fate by Brianna - August 2015 Scholarship Essay
There is much debate over standardized testing, and “required classes” that must be taken and passed in High School in order to graduate. Some say they are ridiculous or unnecessary to the teenage mind in order to stay on track to graduate. Peers of mine in High School have noted that finding the derivative of a parabola on a graph is far less important than knowing how to pay bills for your first apartment. If I had the choice of introducing a new subject into the curriculum the newest addition to the High Schools across America would be a personal finance class.
Personal finance was a class I was fortunate to take part in my senior year of High School. I had the option between AP Calculus or AP Statistics but thought for the betterment of my post High School life that learning about how to sustain myself might be the better route. In this class I obtained knowledge of car insurance, home loans, student loans, apartment hunting, budgeting, how to use spreadsheets and graphs to visually see my savings tracker, and how to always be sure that I could financially sustain myself and know how to have fun doing it. This class would be a huge advantage to incorporate into the American high school system in that not only does it include credits needed to graduate, but it would better prepare students for their pre college/post high school life depending on their career choice.
Students in my town revealed that they had little to no knowledge of how to endorse a check, or track savings, or the best way to pay off their pricey student loans from their years in college. With a personal finance class in every American high school, students would have a sturdy building block when entering college. Writing essays for scholarships and keeping your grades up is a huge part of senior year, but so is the preparation for leaving home. Many schools don’t offer on campus housing which leaves students with the choice of a long commute to classes or finding a roommate and moving into their first apartment. Colleges that do offer on campus housing seem to always be more costly than those without, which brings back the idea of paying off student loans and budgeting. For eighteen years of an average teenager’s life, before leaving for college, the individual has no need to worry about pricing of food, laundry, electricity or automobiles, it barely crosses the mind unless under certain circumstances. With a personal finance class put into every senior’s schedule, the individuals would obtain and sustain the knowledge and ability to be able to financially keep themselves through the mystery years after High School.
Through personal experience and newly obtained knowledge of finance, I feel more prepared as an incoming freshman into the new college life. Moving away from home and into an apartment has been significantly easier with the skills taken away from the personal finance class. I have my teacher Mrs. Underwood to be extremely grateful for my new knowledge and how beneficial it has been to me and I can strongly encourage the use of this class in high schools everywhere across the American school system.