Formal learning can teach you a great
deal, but many of the essential skills in
life are the ones you have to develop on
your own. – ~ Lee Iacocca
think teacher’s have probably the best job
in the world. The importance of an
education is irrefutable.
Many items on the
list below are touched upon, some covered
in more depth than others in our
schooling, but I think the key factor is
where the emphasis is placed. What I’ve
come to learn is there’s specific angles
towards and pieces of these subjects that
should be looked at and studied more
closely in an effort to give students a real
edge before being handed a diploma and
heading down life’s path. Many of the same
items I’m going to share have been
mentioned in various articles all over the
internet. But I wanted to share my top 12.
The 12 life skills I strongly feel are most
important some of which schools touch on
but don’t emphasize nor go into enough
detail about. Too much graphing
parabolas, memorizing the quadratic
formula, and learning to diagram sentences
and not enough real world material to use
and apply. With that being said, here are
the top 12 life skills I wish I learned more
about in school:


MANAGING MONEY

Schools like to teach finance, accounting,
etc but they fail to emphasize the
importance of saving, how to keep your
own budget, how to manage your own
money, and how our tax system works.
Required in depth courses on building my
own personal budget, negotiating contracts,
reading financial statements, creating a
budget geared towards longterm saving,
investing in companies and buying stocks
would have been extremely beneficial.
Above all else, we underestimate the
importance of learning what the value of a
dollar really means. While all of these are
absolutely touched on in finance and
business courses, the importance of
maintaining a self-budget and managing
you personal money should be required
courses for all and heavily emphasized as
required comprehension for life’s journey.

DATING & ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS
“Romance has gone the way of cursive
handwriting.”
~ Rachel Greenwald, Author and Dating
Coach
Nothing is more saddening than people
who continue to get straight A’s in school,
pile on the electives, build great resumes,
Eyeteeth have forgotten or never realized
the
meaning of love. Many people lose out on
love simply
because they don’t realize that indeed
there is much to learn about falling into,
maintaining, and flourishing in dating and
romantic relationships. There is a lack of
knowledge today on attachment theories,
what romance means to people, the rules
of dating (are there rules?), and the
meaning of love. If this was focused on
more in schools I strongly feel we’d be
more prepared for “the one” when he or
she comes along.

MARRAIGE, FAMILY & RAISING KIDS
Marriage, family, and kids are hard work.
There are many many wonderful things
about family, but it has a lot of ups and
downs. Maintaining a marriage over the
course of several decades (or more) can be
very hard work. Only an intense
understanding of love, connection, and the
depths of it’s meaning can bond two
people for a relationship’s longterm
course. Raising a family is no easier. Ask
anyone raising a newborn, toddler, or teen
and most will tell you there was so much to
learn that they didn’t know prior. There’s
much to be learned in the real world about
marriage, family, and children we didn’t
know anything about upon leaving school.
Professional Etiquette / Manners
There’s so many people in the work place
who are frankly clueless about how to write
good emails. They also are horrible at
handling themselves in a formal or
professional setting and are bad
communicators. Communication is critical
in so many corners of life. Courses in our
schools implementing professional work
etiquette would be extremely beneficial. It
can be as simple as writing a thank you
card after a job interview to using proper
notation in a professional correspondence.
My grandmother Gloria “Go-Go” Pilkington
was a stickler for hats indoors. If you came
in with a hat on she’d stare you down and
by all means you better take that hat off. If
you wore a hat to the dinner table? Forget
it. I can only imagine her in today’s iphone
age. If she saw an iphone at the table I
think it would be the end of all things.
Point is, Go-Go was right. We’ve lost our
connection to manners and common
etiquette. I think above all else they teach
us to respect each others and ourselves. If
we show our appreciation for each other in
formal and informal settings it brings
positive qualities out of us all. Positive
reinforcement and support is an essential
human need. Professional etiquette and
Manners are the subtext of this. Particularly
in the last few decades we have lost some
of our connection to common etiquette.
Schools should start making more of an
effort to emphasize manners so that our
future generations revitalize them. Go-Go
was right.


COPING WITH FAILURE
“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my
career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26
times, I’ve been trusted to take the
game winning shot and missed. I’ve
failed over and over and over again in
my life. And that is why I succeed.”
~ Michael Jordan
There’s a misconception that failure means
you’ve lost the game in life. This couldn’t
be further from the truth. People graduate
school thinking they can conquer the
world. They have their first set of failures
and they hit a wall. When people realize
that failure is actually part of success, they
have breakthroughs. My high school
theater teacher Wayne Salomon use to tell
our class “Fail. Fail better.” At the time I
didn’t know what it meant. But it grew on
me. There’s an interview with Will Smith I
saw recently where he talks about how
“fear kills creativity.” I agree whole
heartedly. You have to be fearless and not
afraid to take risks. Remember that Jerry
Maguire quote at the Kinkos at 3 am?
“That’s how you become great man. Hang
your balls out there.” There’s tremendous
truth to this. And not enough strategies,
skills, and programs are implemented in
our schools to teach our youth about
failure being a given, how to react when it
comes, and how to build on our failures.


HOW TO APPLY FOR JOBS
Many people don’t have any idea about
how to find jobs. They don’t know where to
job hunt, how to write a good resume, what
temp agencies are, what employers look
for, the structure of companies, how to give
themselves an edge, and how to find who
does the hiring. Once the process starts
they don’t know how to interview. There’s
certain strategies and tips people can use
throughout the interview process. I
personally find LinkedIn to be a wonderful
resource for job hunting. Believe it or not,
it is still underused by many. The before,
during, and after of the job application
process should be incorporated more into
our school’s curriculums. Finding quality
jobs is a life skill that is required to reach
our goals and achieve our maximum
potential.

source : https://schoolvibesng.com/important-life-skills-learn-school/