“Adulting” and Breaking the Cycle
Adulting has become a cringey word and a tell tale sign of a millennial who is complaining about the woes of everyday life. While there is probably a better way to describe how we handle things like paying taxes, buying a house, a car, etc. adulting does a pretty good job of encapsulating all of these tasks. Unfortunately, we are just expected to know how to do these things to be considered contributing members of society.
In the age of the internet we are able to find out how to do anything almost instantaneously, but education systems are struggling to keep up with teaching students how to decide what to trust online. When I was in school, Wikipedia was the worst, now college students are being taught to start with wikipedia and to utilize the sources listed there to find more. It’s hard to trust Tik Tok and Instagram bloggers about taxes and know if I’m getting right information. What if it’s different for my state? What if I have a different type of income I need to consider? Having too much information is almost more difficult than not having enough.
So why don’t we get taught this in school? When I was in high school I took an Introduction to business class that taught us the basics of balancing a checkbook but that is the only time I remember learning something that helps me with “adulting.” Even then, we did it by hand and now everyone I know who has a budget has an Excel/Google spreadsheet or an app that automatically tracks their spending habits. I would love to go into depth on how schools should start teaching kids how to learn rather than how to memorize a set of facts, but we can save that for another time.
No matter what is taught in schools it will never be enough or the most current, and it really comes down to responsibility. Whose responsibility is it to ensure we have enough information to “adult?” Is it parents? Teachers? Tik Tok & Instagram influences? I am extraordinarily lucky to have parents that have known how to help me with the things I need to be better at adulting. My mom walked me through doing my taxes by myself for the first time. My dad came with me to buy my first car on my own. They are there when I have questions about starting a new business. What if they weren’t, didn’t know, or had the wrong information? What about the kids that aren’t as lucky as I am?
Ultimately there are a million and one reasons why these skills aren’t taught in school: there isn’t time, teachers don’t know the answers, these skills won’t help on the ACT, etc. So, how do we break the cycle? This is where The Gap Year MSP comes in. I’m a little biased and of course would love everyone to go through a program like The Gap Year and learn some of these adulting skills to ensure people have a foundation of skills that will help them continue to be successful outside of school. TGY is on a mission to break that cycle, as part of our program we teach young adults these skills and teach them how to find more information, to create contributing members of society. The less time we all have to spend on paying taxes, or doing research on the best way to find a house, the more time we have to do things that actually make a difference in the world.
