It’s no secret that our high schools have fallen short on teaching what we millennials see as “important information.” We were in the same school learning the same subjects around the same people seven hours a day, five days a week, for four years, but, when I came to college, I felt extremely under-educated. Not in textbook content, though. I can recite the quadratic formula and I know that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. But what about the other things that we have to know as an adult? I was fortunate enough to have a teacher during junior year who attempted to show us a few of these things, but overall these are a few life skills that should be added to high school curriculum.

Taxes.

What are they? How do you file them? Where does the money go? How do I know if I filed them correctly? What happens if I don’t do them?

Insurance.

How do you get insurance? Where does come from? How do you know what coverage you need? What does it do?

The difference between credit cards and debit cards.

Knowing the difference is actually really important. It is best if basic knowledge about these two kinds of cards is learned before companies mail college students their student cards so that they will what they are getting into.

Building credit.

We all know that you need credit to buy things and get a loan for other stuff, but we need to know how we build credit. There are more ways than just having a credit card, but most people don’t know that. I didn’t until about two weeks ago.

Writing a resume.

This needs to be taught in high school, especially since more and more kids are getting jobs at sixteen and seventeen.

Home repair.

I watch a lot of HGTV, I feel like I can change the support beam to make the house more open-concept. But, the fact of the matter is, I don’t even know how to fix a leaky faucet.

Car repair.

We should learn how to take basic care of our cars when we first start to drive them. You know, like changing a flat tire for instance? That would be nice to know before you’re stranded on the side of the road without cell service.

City laws and ordinances.

I know the first ten amendments, but I don’t know any of the local laws. I feel like high school students should know some of the basic city laws in their towns.

Self Defense.

This is important for all kids to know. I shouldn’t have had my first self defense lesson at nineteen in a chapter meeting. These are the kind of skills that need to be known before the moment they have to use them.

Communication skills.

Basic skills to talk to people face-to-face and writing formal emails to superiors (i.e. professors) are important to know before graduating high school.

First aid.

I think that knowing basic first aid will go a long way. Even if it just knows what to clean out cuts with and which band-aid to use on certain types of cuts, it will still be useful to know.

There are definitely more things we should learn in high school, but these are a few that can easily be turned into daily lessons. We learned a lot in high school, we really did, but most of this we had to learn on our own. It would be beneficial to know at least some of this before we step out into the real world. But hey, at least we know a-squared plus b-squared equals c-squared.