Column: Adulting

I’m proud to say I’m a huge fan of the schools in Whitehall. I think the teachers, staff, administration and board work together in unison to create something special. I’m also very high on the district where I grew up in Wyoming and although it is much larger, they do an outstanding job. While very appreciative of everyone involved in making schools in this country great, I do however wish there would be more life skills available for students.

Whitehall High School does a far better job than my alma mater, but I still think this is something that really needs to change on a national level. There are certain things that need to be part of the curriculum for everyone, not just someone who may have an interest in an elective.

When I was 18, I was a very naïve freshman who thought he knew everything. I knew nothing. I was so eager to get away from home and to be independent; I didn’t realize I did not know how to do this at all. One of my first days of college I was walking through the Student Union at the University of Wyoming and someone stopped me to ask if I wanted a credit card. Despite the fact I knew nothing about how a credit score could affect me later in life, I signed up, was accepted and within two weeks a card with a $2,000 limit showed up in my dorm mailbox.

The next few weeks I felt like the king of the world as I treated myself to compact disc’s, food that wasn’t from the dorm, beer and trips to Denver.

It wasn’t told I had to figure out to deal with that bill every month that this was a very stupid idea. Should I have known better, yes, but I learned the hard away. The mistakes from that card would haunt me for years. This is something my high school could have really hammered into my head. The pizza and a Denver Broncos game were great, the aftermath, not so much. I get so sick of people saying that someone should learn something the hard way. I have the feeling that if someone is taught something beforehand, there would be no need for this. Sometimes in life you screw up and need to learn, but the less error is probably better.

I think a class called “Adulting” could go a long ways into helping. Learning a simple budget and how to apply that at a grocery store would work wonders. While it may sound crazy to people in a smaller town like Whitehall, but there were plenty of people who I graduated with that could not change a tire, this is something they could learn. Most schools have cooking classes, but this is probably something that also could be touched upon in a required “Adulting” class.

Some schools have pools and they do touch upon water safety, but this is something that needs to be addressed everywhere. Any place near water should have mandatory safety classes for students. There are too many preventable accidents that happen. In my second year of swimming in high school I spent around two hours fully dressed in winter clothes treading water in the deep end of a pool. This is something I felt was equally as important to me as learning about Carpet Baggers who infiltrated the South after the Civil War.

A long with school wide introductions to credit and simple business, I think it would great to see more interpersonal and social skills to be taught, and perhaps starting at a younger age.

As a communications major, I took a lot of interpersonal communication classes and learned the importance of listening, decision-making, and working with others. I think this could go a long way to foster better relationships with the younger kids that will hopefully continue as they age. I’m not stupid enough to believe that everyone will get a long all the time, but better interpersonal skills help people understand each other on a completely different level. With better understanding there should be less hate. I think some bullying comes from people not knowing more about each other.

I still have nightmares sometimes about that credit card, I’m just glad it’s paid off. Adulting can be a true joy.