Why do I need to take this class? How will this class help me in my future? I will never use this information in real life.

These are questions and statements that are uttered all too often by high school students around the country.

Although they may be true in some cases, high school does actually prepare students for college just maybe not so much real life.

Take math for example, for four years students complain about the type of math they are doing, complaining how it will never help them in their real life outside of college, and that it is just a memorize-forget scenario. However, the career path a student selects will determine how much math they will be using on a daily basis.

“For example, any field in the medical world will be very heavily math related, no matter the type of medical field you go into. Although, there are some careers that wouldn’t use a whole lot of math, it does help you solve problems when a solution doesn’t seem possible,” Counseling department chair Brenda Lohr said.

Just because a high school student says they know what their career path looks like doesn’t mean they will stick to it. Nearly 80% of college students in the U.S.  end up changing their major at least once, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

High school is looked at by some as a place to become more social. It provides students with the chance to do things outside of their comfort zone in on a small scale without the fear of immense failure.

   “High school taught me to go outside my comfort zone and get out more. It taught me to seek opportunities out rather than wait for someone to hand it to me. Not only that, high school helped me become responsible for my own learning and future,” CHS alumnus Gordon Kok said.

   “I feel like, because I am experiencing these social interactions and I’m not  being so isolated all the time in high school it will help me be more outgoing for when college does come,” sophomore Claire Nugent said.

Although high school can help students become more confident in their ability to interact with their peers and become harder working students. Some feel like it may not prepare them for the day-to-day life of an adult.

“High school did not help me at all with taxes, and I still don’t know exactly how to do them,”  CHS alumna Grace Hannum said, “I wish I could have taken a class that would have helped me keep all my finances in check. I also wish I could have learned how to invest and grow money.”

Even though the interest in adult-prep courses may be high, the constraints of state graduation requirements get in the way.

   “I think that there isn’t enough time in the day for high schools to do everything they could do to prepare students for life, I think we are missing something from the old days, for example most students could take classes about family living, learning how to budget, home Ec. and just learning how to do those everyday life skills,” Lohr said.

   Many students wish that high school was not so focused on specific subjects like math or English but instead focus on how to do things needed for “real life.”

“I don’t like that high school is so strict and demanding and I wish there were more ‘real world’ classes so that out of high school we won’t need to rely on google, or our mom for help.” junior Tawny Johnson said.

Regardless of the classes offered in high school, students who want to learn, grow, and understand new things have a better chance of benefiting from the experience because they had the work ethic to do so.