Many people would probably admit that high school was one
of the most stressful times in their life. High school was four years of trying
to figure out “who you are” as you gained and lost friends and found your place
among your peers. The stress of dressing like everyone else and making sure
your appearance is approved by fellow students stopped being so important once
you entered college and individualism was more imperative. But the stress of
academics is something that only seemed to increase.
While in
high school I was someone who never really struggled with academics. Learning and
retaining what I learned in those forty minute classes came easily to me. When I
entered college I realized that high school did not prepare me for what was to
come at all. Sure I could write a simple three page paper in high school, but
college taught me that I didn’t understand MLA and how to make sure my paper
was the best it could be. I was never encouraged to proof read my essay and
cite outside sources for more information on what I was writing which made
writing in college that much harder. I never learned proper techniques of
studying and how to pick out the most useful information in the readings I had
to do every night. Sure I could have looked up all this information on the
internet in my free time but if you spend seven hours in school five days a
week surely you’d think they’d go over these things once. My school put more
importance on making sure every student took four years of science than making
sure every student knew which words fit in sentences and how to properly place
commas. Of course learning other subjects is important but how are you going to
properly explain on paper that you understand these subjects if you can’t
properly form a simple sentence?
I recall
in high school that I only had one small lesson on proper grammar in my
freshman honors English class. I don’t know how other high schools did it but
one lecture is ridiculous to me. I understand the difference between your and you’re
and their, there and they’re but many people my age don’t. While taking my
daily scroll through Facebook I note all the mistakes in the grammar of people
my age and I find it to be quite sad. I don’t know if those people don’t care
about their grammar and how they present themselves on the internet but frankly
it’s something startling to me. I can’t even imagine some of these people
getting professional jobs and presenting something to their superiors full of grammatical
errors and horrible sentence structure. Sure I still make mistakes when I write,
but I make attempts to make sure what I say makes sense and sounds intelligent
but I can’t say the same for some of the people my age.
With final
exams around the corner and final essays being handed in (or just started) I can’t
help but to think that I also never properly learned time management. Sure it
is another thing I could have learned by myself and right now I am teaching
myself to do more with my time but it is something simple that can be taught in
high schools. We have classes that teach all the math we will actually use in
our lives but very little or even no classes that teach students how to sound
intelligent and make the most out of their time and be as prepared as they can
be for college and beyond. I think it’s important to put emphasis on these
subjects so we don’t have future lawyers and doctors tht tlk lik dis lol.
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