High school is very much a blur, with a few vivid memories of my favorite moments with my best friends. My least vivid memories, however, are all the math classes, SAT/ACT prep, the science lessons I forgot about the second the bell rang, the AP classes that wouldn’t transfer as college credit and everything else in between. Now that I’m in college, a few of those classes stuck, but I could have really benefited from some real-life lessons rather than the core curriculum. There are ample things that a 20-year-old needs to know, but I never learned because I was too busy studying logarithms (which I never got the hang of anyway) and learning how molecules worked. So, here are a few things that could make my life a whole lot easier if I learned them before graduating high school.

1.How to do my taxes

Honestly, if my mom didn’t sit me down and tell me how important it is to do my taxes, I would never have thought twice about it.

2. A “Real World Hacks” class

I can’t even begin to count how many times I have screwed up being an adult already. If only I knew a few secrets that showed me how to get through my day without a mental break down.

3. How to write a resume and cover letter.

It took until I started my junior semester to learn how to write up a resume and cover letter. When I left high school, there were numerous times when I needed both of these. I ended up Googling cheesy resumes for my first internship application... needless to say I didn’t get a call for an interview.

4. How to start a line of credit... and paying the balance off on time.

I was lucky enough that my mom taught me this one too. But there’s got to be a ton of young adults out there that have no idea how to start a credit card or about paying it. I was at least 19 before I even knew what “building credit” meant.

5. Tips on how to organize my life.

This one is huge. I constantly feel like I am drowning in responsibilities. There’s always a struggle trying to balance school, work, friends, post-grad plans and everything else under the sun. Learning how to prioritize would have definitely helped with not only my transition into college, but throughout my college career as well.

6. How to pay bills... all of them.

Sending a big ole thank you to my mom for this one as well. I would have been in debt up to my ears already if she didn’t teach me how to pay a bill. But what if she didn’t have time to show me? Or what if she didn’t know how to use today’s technology to pay her bills? I’d be screwed.

7. How to cook a (decent) meal.

Now, I know there’s Home Economics for this. But one semester of learning how to make snickerdoodles did not teach me how to make a full meal. Luckily, I have a family of cooks in my house so I never starved, but I definitely did not have time to learn from them. I mean, I’m sure I had some time but that’s beside the point. A class a semester throughout high school on cooking would have gone a long way, honestly.

8. Now that I’m thinking about it, a class on HOW to study would have been nice.

I’m the worst at studying. I get distracted easily, I give up if I can’t understand a concept and I am so ridiculously disorganized in trying to find what method works best for me (which is hard when you don’t exactly know many methods). Just like schools offered SAT/ACT prep, they should have offered a “study methods” course as well.

I mean, such classes may be a little far-fetched. But hey, high school curriculum creators, I know you were once in the same position that I’m in today. So, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to take some of these ideas into consideration, no?