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Kara Longo

Mrs. Cramer

College Comp. Pd.3

30 November 2020

Feeling Unprepared. I’m scared!

Millions of teenagers struggle daily not getting the proper life skills needed when leaving

for college. Left without the necessities, like how to cook, do laundry, budgeting for groceries,

paying bills, change a tire, and other adulting duties that they need to live on their own and care

for themselves, will strongly impact how a teenager looks forward in life. They are going to take

it as a negative and it will put them down when they cannot do something. Teens of our

generation and past generations, have been relying on school to teach us these life skills. In the

school's perspective, the school is relying more on parents to teach their children these life skills

but not all parents are not even qualified to teacher their children these common life skills for

after high school. Schools have only taught us to memorize work and phrases, like in history

class where we are just taking the information and writing it on a paper again, where we

probably will never use it later in life. Courses are being offered way later in school whereas

children we are limited to the knowledge when growing up. Our schools have done very little in

teaching us to be prepared for life, they have not taught us how to handle money, not preparing

us for future jobs, and lack basic life skills at a younger age.

Schools have left students hanging when letting them go after graduation. When they get

to college, students will not know how to properly save money for their academics. Students are

left clueless when it comes to doing taxes, paying bills, writing a check. With a simple class in
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high school that could all be solved. In some way if there was a basic finance lesson in a math

class at least one semester implemented, it would solve a lot of these fears and issues students

have when leaving high school. Outside the school during this semester, outside homework can

be assigned and completed at one's home where they must maintain a checkbook, write bills, and

show progress throughout the class with these items. If students are left without knowing how to

properly budget their money and are left in a cluster. Students need to be capable of knowing

how to divide their money wisely to be financially stable and without a school and parents help,

they are left without that basic knowledge.

Our lives are really shaped after high school, we are let into the real world where we get

jobs to get money and to provide for our families. We are not entirely prepared it seems though

when we are let go of at graduation of college and high school. We are let into the real world

with nobody to guide us. Yes, we have career cruising freshman year, but after that we have

nothing but the classes, we have been set to take at the beginning of each school year. Schools

should be more active in students' lives trying to prepare them for what is to come ahead.

Teachers are just handing students some memorization skills and throwing a test at them that

they will never need again. Schools should make it their priority to get students ready for a job

from the smallest skills like proper etiquette to changing tires on cars for example. These basic

life skills are what students need, students need to have these basic life skills to be prepared and

ready for a job when out of college.

Students throughout life rely on their parents for a lot of life skills. Whether it be food,

clothing, money anything that a proper parent should be giving their child for that part in their

life. Some parents are lacking in this area because they have gone through the same lack of

teaching, students are going though which is the lack of up bringing to get a job. Some parents
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are blessed to be having a job providing for their family regularly but for some parents it is much

more difficult. Parenting goes off in so many directions where parents might not even be in their

children's lives. Parents should not be held accountable to teach their child every little skill,

especially when even they may not have those given skills to help teach their child/children.

Schools should start with the younger children, for example on how to help thier parents. A

simple way they could be taught on how to help a parent would be simply cleaning up after

themselves. Teaching them simple chores like how to cook, clean, do anything to help parents

around the house when in need. This also goes for the classes not preparing children, they should

be starting at a younger age to find out what to do in life instead of waiting all these years till

high school and just falling short because the system is corrupt. Schools can help bridge this gap

and help not just kids become better individuals, but also more productive members of society in

a more positive manner.

Students are so fixated on just finding a college and their outside lives but are so

unprepared for their futures. This is not their fault, parents and schools need to come together to

form a safe and an actual educational environment for students. This environment would help

students to be able to properly get an education and proper learning skills for their futures. It is

not the fact that students don’t want to be there, well some might not, but students are just being

held to memorization standard, instead of learning the life skills they need. Schools need to

provide a better place for students to learn, no matter what it takes. Even if they must implement

smaller sections into their classes just to learn how to do taxes or learn about how to be

nutritious. Our schools have done very little in teaching students to be prepared for life, they

have not taught us how to handle money, not preparing us for future jobs, and lack basic life
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skills at a younger age. Schools need to step up their game for the future generations ahead. In

the end there is more to school than academics. There is a life behind learning.

Works Cited

Chen, Grace. "Are Public School Students Prepared for the 'Real World?'" Public School Review,

30 Apr. 2018, www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/are-public-school-students-prepared-

for-the-real-world. Accessed 23 Oct. 2020.

G, Alessandra. "10 Lessons High School Has Taught Me." Millennials of New Jersey, Odyssey,

20 June 2017, www.theodysseyonline.com/what-high-school-has-taught-me. Accessed

23 Oct. 2020.

Guise, Steven. "How School Trains Us to Fail in the Real World." Steven Guise,

stephenguise.com/how-school-trains-us-to-fail-in-the-real-world/. Accessed 23 Oct.

2020.

"Opinion Opinion: High School Should Be Reaching Life Skills." Fenton in Print, 17 Dec. 2018,

fentoninprint.com/17064/opinion/high-school-should-be-teaching-life-skills/. Accessed

23 Oct. 2020.

Toe, Annabelle, et al. "Teenagers Need to Learn Life Skills in High School, Because Many

Aren't Learning at Home." The Dallas Morning News [Dallas, TX],

www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2019/05/17/teenagers-need-to-learn-life-

skills-in-high-school-because-many-aren-t-learning-at-home/. Accessed 17 May 2019.