The academic world and your place in it
We all have to go to school, it's an unfortunate fact of life because while we may spend 10 years in mandatory school alone, we often leave with more questions than we began with, or so I believe. Now, certainly, the beginning years of school are important, teaching us the basics of life, but we enter middle school and get our first taste of freedom with choosing what electives we want to do. By no means is this wrong; however, I believe that we can do better in preparing our students for the future that lies ahead of them.
See, we may believe that we were set up for success by the school system; however, think about all the unknowns we have to face in life. Do you know how to do taxes from school? Do you know how to invest in companies that will provide you with a stable income and base? Do you know how to have an emergency fund for when life is well, life? Do you know what loans are and how to find ones that will help you if you continue your education? The answer to all of these is NO, school doesn't teach you any of this. What is the point of school if half of the things that provide us with a fruitful life are denied?
I believe seeing that there are all these unknowns that we need to be better, we need to improve our schooling system to teach us something that actually matters, as boring as it may be, at least there is a point. In my education journey, I have yet to learn to invest, save, budget, etc, etc. What is the point of a school that teaches you nothing of what society expects after graduation? If we just go to school for ten years, then proceed to go on to another school, that may provide some value, but cost your life savings to the point of using loans that only will hurt you more in the end. I don't foresee a change in this system any time soon, however, I am hopeful that we, the students, collectively can learn this kind of information to pass on to our next generation.
While there is a lot of gloom that I wrote of before, there is hope in a sense. While we don't become fully prepared from our 10+ years of education, we do come away knowing some of the very basic layer of information. That being algebra, which helps you calculate your interest rates.. If you get really crazy, you get to calculus and you'll learn about optimization problems, which all in all just tell you how to maximize your space with as little material as possible, think soda cans, bottles, circular pens, etc. Now, while this might not be of interest on face value, it will at least teach you stuff important to say when starting a trash can business with said amount of material, you can optimize to hold the most possible area.
All in all, school can be dumb at times and peer pointless at others, for example, trying to learn everything about a dude who lived 300 years ago. Your probably going to wish you learned something that would actually help you, however since most of this information school teaches you (or at least what it did for me) allows you to have time to be a kid, enjoy it; I know it sounds cheesy but soon if you go to college especially if your a stem major you will have not nearly as much time. I also highly encourage, if you're fascinated, to start learning more about the stock market and the stuff mentioned earlier that is highly important to real life, rather than just exams.
