How To Adult 101 by Lillian

How To Adult 101 by Lillian - August 2015 Scholarship Essay

There’s been a sentiment floating around the Internet lately, growing by the day. People are graduating high school and going on to college and their adult lives, stopping short because suddenly they realize that they have no idea what they’re doing.

Kids in school are learning so much about chemistry, dead American poets, biology, calculus, the geography of South America, et cetera, but they still have no idea how to “be an adult”, as it were. Ask most any graduated senior or college student what they’re anxious about and you will come back with answers such as “I don’t know how to cook anything more complicated than mac and cheese” and “I have debilitating abdominal pain but I don’t know how to schedule a doctor’s appointment so I guess I’ll just take some Ibuprofen and hope it goes away”. We as a society have a duty to our young people to help them learn how to graduate from childhood into adulthood.

School has become somewhat of a joke as people realize that the classes taught do nothing to prepare them for what’s to come in the adult world. “Why would I need to know how to do taxes? The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell!” is a cynical attitude I’ve heard and even adopted from time to time. Instead of merely joking about it, however, we can actually make a difference in the lives of millions of students across the country.

The institution of a mandatory, Life-Economics style class can teach students essential skills for their adult lives. Questions ranging from “how do I register to vote” to “what do I do if my credit card gets rejected” and “I tore a hole in my shirt, how do I sew it up” can be answered handily. Young people can learn how to live instead of just get by in the world.

What I’m proposing isn’t Home Economics 2.0. A class like this will cover a wide range of topics, from basic cooking to sewing to filling out tax forms. Students who take this class will be better prepared for the world ahead of them. They will feel secure in the knowledge that they have been given knowledge they actually need instead of knowledge the state says they need.

While some may say that this goal can be achieved in the home without the need for government involvement, a number of factors combine to make this situation a virtual impossibility. Working parents, single parents, extra-curricular activities, sports, work — all these things (along with the copious amounts of homework students already struggle with) prevent any at-home teaching from being widely successful.

It’s high time we as a society looked around and realized that academia is painfully flawed, teaching students about the unit circle and how to distinguish a sonnet from an ode when many of them still do not have knowledge applicable for use outside of school. This proposed class will have tangible effects on our youth, and they will be thankful for the skills they will be given. It’s time we did our jobs — teaching our kids what they need to know.