Looking into the future, seniors find themselves anticipating the release from their high school years and finally moving on into the real word. Yet, moving from a world of having to ask to use the restroom, to taking responsibility over a career, seniors feel little to no preparedness for their adult lives.

Students are taught to focus on the primary objective: doing well on a test. Whether it be for a simple unit test or the big AP final, high schoolers learn more about how to pass a test than how to take care of finances. Schools strain so much on the testing aspect  that they forget to teach students the actual necessities they need in order to live outside of school. Even more so, the majority of what is taught is only useful for passing the class is forgotten after making the grade. It is guaranteed that if one were to ask a senior what they learned in their English class freshman year, they would not be able to provide more than an ‘I do not know.’ Granted, some may argue that learning certain classes such as geometry will be useful for the future, however, certain subjects like this only provide benefit for specific jobs, such as being an architect.

In a report released by the ACT, 60 percent of students who tested, missed the mark on at least two of the subjects tested. Schools have stressed over this and have been implementing Common Core Standards and STEM opportunities, although, this again only assists in making the grade. This will help to get one into college, but it cannot teach a person how to maintain a budget or how to pay a mortgage.

Once these courses are taken, seniors are thrown an unexpected responsibility, in which they must now fend for themselves. They are continually treated as children and then jump to being  ‘grow-up’ and mature right after their senior year. What makes it this way? It is the handful of individuals who ruin the respect deserved to the majority of seniors, being the cause for having to ask for a bathroom break and the constant monitoring of behavior. This is the small handful of students who ruin it for the rest of their peers.

What needs to be done is that schools should offer preparation for the independent lifestyle.They should have classes throughout a student’s high school career that teach about taxes, owning a home, etc., instead of giving seniors only half of a semester of economics. More importantly, schools need to be sure to encourage these classes in order for students to succeed in adulthood.