Life after High School by Erin

Life after High School by Erin - August 2015 Scholarship Essay

Aside from providing education, the role of a high school is to help prepare kids in the community to become productive and successful adults. At age 18 when many young Americans graduate from high school, there still are so many questions about how to participate in society. If I could add a subject to the American high school curriculum, it would be called “Life after High School”. High school graduates have their diplomas, but do they know how to balance a check book? Do they know how to file their taxes? Or how to navigate health insurance? Do they truly understand how loans and interest work? I didn’t. And without guidance from my hardworking, financially responsible, and unbelievably supportive parents, I might still not know. “Life after High School” would serve as a course to empower young people to make more informed decisions and become more successful members of society.

An issue that many high school graduates face well into adulthood is the undertaking of student loans. To many 18-year-olds, tuition of $30,000 and tuition of $50,000 both just sound like really big numbers. It is not until they are working and making payments towards loans and other expenses that these students realize that $20,000 makes a serious difference. If young people truly understood the workings of loans and interest, they may not be as willingly take on such huge sums of debt. Instead, students might take a more fiscally responsible approach and begin their higher education at community college to save money. That way, the thousands of dollars in savings could be reinvested in postgraduate education, a mortgage on a home, a startup business, or a thousand other economy-stimulating possibilities.

Instead, uninformed young people invest their money in expensive liberal arts universities with the promise of a good education and the experience of a lifetime. After graduation, they’re saddled with crippling debt and bleak possibilities of attaining a decent job. For the benefit of our country, something needs to be done to help young people succeed. Adding a class to the high school curriculum that is based around teaching students how to be responsible participants in society would be an extremely practical and wide-reaching manner of helping our youth learn how to advocate for themselves, make more informed decisions, and find success faster.