Today I saw an article title (shameless clickbait) about how Prince Harry feels disoriented not having a job or schedule now that he's a "commoner" in California. I thought for a minute about how disorienting it must be to go from having every moment of your life scheduled, and every task aligned with a specific purpose, to suddenly having no structure to lean on.
As I pondered the Prince's predicament, I realized this sensation isn't foreign to me, or to many of us. In fact, I'd venture to guess this is how every high school senior is about to feel as graduations occur and their uncertain future looms closer.
From age 6 we wake up, Monday through Friday, and show up at school where we follow a curated routine designed to help us build the skills we need to move up each year, and tick off accomplishments that serve to propel us further forward in our education. We do this for 13 years, and then suddenly we're handed a "job well done" and expected to suddenly do it all ourselves. At 18 we're expected to plan the rest of our lives out, and plot out every step we need to take to make it happen.
Is it any wonder that high school seniors throw some serious attitude? I can't speak to your years of schooling, but my education did nothing to prepare me to plan out my entire life, much less plan for my first semester in college.
Sure, I could write one hell of an essay with beautiful MLA citations (which was a cruel joke because in college you only use APA), but I had no idea how to function as an adult and map out what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I didn't even know what Watergate was! In school you just restart history at the beginning each year (because so much about the 13 colonies has changed) and then your teacher acts shocked when you only get to 1925 by June.
All jokes aside, high school did nothing to prepare me for life outside those four secure, scheduled walls. I didn't know what my passions were. I didn't even know what skills I had outside of having the ability to pass a regurgitative curriculum year after year. I didn't know how to file my taxes, find a physician, or determine if the Quick Lube was overcharging me to change my air filter (They are. Always.) All I knew was that my next step was to pick another educational institution, where I would pretty much start the same process all over again, except this time it cost me $25,000 per year to not know why I was doing what I was doing.
Sure, there are counselors, but honestly all they're trained to do is help you check off society's agreed upon list of 'necessary education'. College counselors are a bit more helpful, but only if you know what you want to do with the next 60-80 years of your life. Y'all at 18 I didn't even know there were different sizes of tires, much less what degree I wanted to spend $100,000 to earn. My career aptitude test told me I should be a taxidermist, so that was less than helpful.
Kids shouldn't be graduating high school, after 12 years of education, with no life skills and no clue what to do about their future. We need to be building a public school curriculum that educates students about every aspect of life. They should know how to craft a well-researched essay, and how to change a tire. They should have an understanding of the events that shaped our history, and how to compare car loans.
We should be engaging their brains and discovering their passions so that when they move the tassel on their graduation cap, we aren't pushing them off a cliff thinking they can fly, when we didn't teach them how.
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