How School Fails Us
While school came relatively easy to me, life post-high school graduation did not.
I graduated at seventeen, without the first clue as to what to do with the rest of my life. I had hobbies & interests growing up, of course—primarily writing—but I hadn’t the first idea how to turn that into a career. At the time, I thought the only degrees available to pursue for writers were either Journalism or English and I wasn’t interested in either option. After working on the school newspaper, I knew I didn’t want to be a journalist, chasing down leads or making edits & layouts; and beyond teaching, I didn’t know what other opportunities an English degree could even provide. Like a lot of kids, I played “Teacher” as a child, although I wasn’t overly keen on the idea of being a teacher—particularly because, having had teachers in my family, I knew how overworked, under-appreciated and extremely underpaid the profession is in the United States. All I knew for certain was that I wanted to write stories that connected people to the past. I wanted to show readers that, although it might be ancient history to us, it’s still relevant to today’s world and still influences us and our decisions.
Neither one of my parents had completed more than a semester at college, and as the eldest daughter, I had no one in my immediate life who had the lived experience to share with me what my next steps could be. My high school guidance counselor provided zero guidance beyond giving us one career aptitude test—where, writing & history were at the top of my results—however, there was never a next step of: “If you receive ‘X’ consider ‘Y or Z’ degree.” It felt like all my peers that were pursuing higher education just magically knew what they were going to do and I felt bewildered at the idea of having to select first from a list of first colleges, and then degrees to determine a career that would last 20+ years. I closed my eyes and pointed at a university I didn’t want to go to and picked a Journalism degree I didn’t want and all I felt was dread at a future that was spiraling out of my control.
The summer after graduation, I moved to a city a few hours from my parents. I worked one part-time job, and then a second, and saved what I could to attend the local community college in order to complete general education at a cheaper rate before transferring to the university for my specific Journalism courses. After spending a couple years completing courses part-time, I felt this was taking too long. I had learned that the community college offered an Event Planning program, and, being inspired by my part-time job at a party supply store, decided to switch over to complete that instead. It would take less time and I had a couple of coworkers who had become friends and together, the three of us started building a dream business where one of us would focus on the financial aspects, the other would be front-of-house and marketing I would provide the creative design. And for the first time, the future finally felt bright.
That is, until the 2008 recession hit and suddenly, no one was planning events anymore. The light that had been shining on my future extinguished, and the time I spent on the degree felt nothing more than a waste of my energy and money. From another coworker, I learned that creative writing was a degree offered at the local university! I was elated! I made an appointment to meet with an advisor there and see about transferring. Only, during the meeting, she told me that practically nothing I had completed at the community college would transfer over, and I would need to start all over again.
I left the meeting on the verge of tears, and decided that further education was not the path for me. I decided to focus on writing on my own, without any kind of guidance, any kind of structure, just me, sitting down to write whenever I felt inspiration strike. Needless to say, that didn’t work so well and I made zero progress. At this point, six years have now gone by since I graduated high school. Most of my peers have graduated college, and I still have no fucking clue what I want to be when I grow up. I’m just working these two part time jobs until I promote up at the library and I let life take me on the current like a kite in the wind.
Even today, with a degree in Interior Architecture & Design that I’m still paying for and not using, I’m so frustrated by the system that we call “EDUCATION” in the US. Because it is not education, it is indoctrination. You’re taught to pass standardized exams, not your passions or interests, and certainly not to develop life skills.
Education would require everyone to take everything, at least once. Everyone needs to take an automotive class. Everyone should know how to change a tire, charge a battery, understand the components of your vehicle. Everyone needs to take a cooking class. Everyone should know how to prepare healthy & nutritious meals. Everyone needs to take a cleaning class. Everyone should know how to care for their home. EVERYONE NEEDS TO TAKE A SEXUAL HEALTH CLASS. Everyone needs to take a personal finance class. Everyone should know how to how to balance a budget and how to live within your means; everyone should know how credit cards work and understand credit card debt; everyone should know how to file their taxes; or start a business or understand how the market works in order to to invest and grow their money. Everyone needs to take a language course. Everyone should be bi-lingual if not multi-lingual so we can communicate with other people outside of our world. Everyone needs a speech class to learn how to communicate. Everyone needs a psychology class to better understand mental health & emotional intelligence. Everyone needs to take a literature class. Everyone should know how to read and comprehend what they’re reading. Everyone needs to understand basic mathematics & science. Everyone needs to take an art class. Dabble in painting, pottery, music, dance. Everyone needs to take a sewing class. Everyone should know how to mend their clothes and make things last longer.
None of this is taught because none of this benefits the bigger, overarching scheme of society. True, these classes would would benefit YOU immensely. But this knowledge doesn’t benefit the people who want to keep you in the cog of the machine. It doesn’t benefit the people who are going to profit off the work you do. And it keeps you right where they want you: in a cycle of poverty & debt and having to work until you die.
Because if you knew how to balance a budget, and not go into debt, and how to start your own business and how to save & invest money by maximizing your earnings in the stock market, you’d begin to build your own generational wealth just like all these wealthy people are able to do. You’d be able to maintain your home and your car; you’d be able to eat nourishing & healthy meals, and most importantly, you wouldn’t have to work four jobs to make your ends meet. You would get your time & energy back and that, above all else, are the most priceless resources you have. But no, they don’t teach you that in high school because education is just a way to keep you under control. They teach you just enough to get you into society but not for you to master your own life.
You would get your time & energy back and that, above all else, are the most priceless resources you have.
If I knew all of this at seventeen, I would’ve made it a priority to take all these extra curricular courses, so that by the time time I graduated, I would have had a clear, honed-in vision of what my future would be. College isn’t the time to be taking all these classes and figuring it out. But they want you to do so, because in high school, for most folks attending public education, those courses are free. Yes, there are extras you might need to pay for if you sign up for sports or any kind of group that requires membership dues or you need special equipment outside what the school can provide. But for you to sign up for an automotive class, you’re probably working on one of your classmates cars. If you sign up for a cooking class, those ingredients are probably provided to you by the school. When you get to college, it’s out of your fucking pocket. It’s on your dime to sign up and now take two years of a language class because, “it makes you a well-rounded individual.” This is verbatim what I was told at my meeting with the advisor at the university. And while I agree with her, I think the language course should begin when you begin school; not at the end of your academic studies. College should be the focus of your future career. That is it. That is all. It should be understanding your chosen career field inside and out.
While I can’t go back to change the past, I have severed myself from the idea that I should ever need to know what I want to be when I grow up. My only goal now is to appreciate the beauty that surrounds us, and to find my own ways of inspiring others to live with more intention, more beauty, and forge a deeper connection to what matters most.
We are all works-in-progress, so these days, I subscribe to the belief that we should all be life-long learners. There will always be something to spark that curiosity within you, and even that can (and should!) change as we evolve daily.
My current curiosities are multi-layered:
All things Gothic (primarily architecture & literature, although my inner former emo-teenager self wouldn’t say no a wardrobe of dark academia & romantic goth attire)
Homes & Haunts (primarily memoirs of folks purchasing countryside homes and restoring them to their former glory)
Slower Living thru Heritage & Heirlooms (primarily thru my & my partner’s ancestry of European-inspired design & recipes)
This is why I love taking advantage of the free access I gain through my local library, which allows me to request any book my heart desires & flip through it’s pages before committing it to my own personal collection. However, below are a few of the books that I’ve adored and return to, time and time again. It’s my own personal curriculum, filled with all the things I find inspiring: gothic fiction, dark academia; psychological thrillers; interior design; heritage-inspired recipes; and the true meaning of home.