Beware the Jub-Jub Bird

Late in high school, I was actually certified as an aerobics instructor, and one of my high school jobs was teaching 1 and 3 meter-high diving. We had a trampoline with a harness...jumping is a lot of fun, especially when you have a harness and you don't have to land.

All through school, I played a bunch of sports that I sucked at, at my mother's insistence. I was in gymnastics for 9 years. That 9th year, I had a growth spurt and broke my wrist, sprained my ankle, etc. That year, I started basketball instead. I was horrible at that too, but ended up playing varsity from 9th grade on. Really, that isn't an impressive feat. My entire school, 5th-12th grades, was comprised of 211 girls. The odds were in my favor, and I was pretty good at 3-pointers from the top of the key.

In college, I planned to keep up with diving and swimming. My first college had a pool and everything. My first college also had boys, and beer, and freedom I had no idea how to handle. If you're reading closely, you'll notice that I said "first college." I'm not going to tell you how many colleges I attended, or how many degrees I have, because it all indicates a vast amount of book-learning, which viscerally implies actual intelligence. There is a vast gap dividing book-learning and intelligence. An intelligent person would take a $120,000 college education as the gift that it is. An intelligent person wouldn't sign up to take French, which has absolutely nothing to do with anything I will ever do in my life. Sure, it was helpful when I drove from the south of France to Paris right after graduation, but since then, no. It has had no bearing on my life whatsoever. I can easily understand that the French verse of Blondie's "Sunday Girl" is actually the same as the second (I think) English verse. Just in French. An intelligent person would take classes that would actually prepare her for a career, or any other aspect of life that would contribute to her OVERALL intelligence.

There is no excuse for taking a class about the specifics of property law, and the moral implications of claiming things as personal property. I swear, even one of the professors would sleep through class, which was conducted as a salon-style discussion. There was an asshole guy in the class who proclaimed himself to be a communist anarchist. To piss him off, I wrote an explicatory argument against the practicality of Marx and Engels, then read it in class. He actually picked up my backpack and hit me with it.

That got him kicked out of that school.

There is no excuse for colleges, which are responsible for young people, to not require some sort of life skills class. Teach young adults to balance their bank books, preserve their credit, protect their identities, learn to type, learn to budget time, apply for jobs, and strategize their course work to function with entertainment and the socialization that only college can provide.

Teach all students, especially girls, some sort of self-defense. Require it. Teach everyone about grief and all its stages.

What I'm saying is, SMART people go to college. It is the responsibility of the college, in my opinion, to graduate INTELLIGENT people.

When I was teaching a few years back, I was amazed at the utter lack of desire to learn. Kids go to college to get their degrees, not to actually acquire skills and knowledge they might actually use practically.

There were tons of kids who knew what the periodic table of elements was, and could memorize all of the elments and their atomic weights, but couldn't tell you a thing about why it's structured the way it is, or the elegant simplicity of its design. The saddest part is, most of them didn't care to learn about it. They were in my classes because they needed it to graduate. Nothing else mattered. I could throw all of my excitement and passion for the subject, wrapped in a nice burrito of helpful facts at them, but nobody would go for it.

It was probably good that I was "heartily encouraged" to participate in sports. It was a great way to learn teamwork, budget time, and take care of hte body. But it was more than that. So many people walk around with their heads up their asses, wondering why their lives aren't better than they are. They won't do anything unless it only requires the least amount of effort on their part. The sense of entitlement most Americans have is encouraged in schools. Hell, it's even rewarded! It's so easy to drift through an entire college education with almost no effort at all, and learn nothing. Yet, on graduation day, you wear that cap and that gown. You get up on that stage and shake the Dean's hand and smile for the camera. Because you've EARNED it.

When you're out in the world, doing something not everyone does, like going to gymnastics every Wednesday night, or even going to the movies or walking around your neighborhood, you're contributing to your overall intelligence. You're doing more than just the minimum required for survival. You're actually living your life. And you're not very likely to get clobbered with a backpack.

Realizing that there's a world outside of your normal routine, and ultimately exploring and taking part in something extra is the best kind of education you can get. It doesn't pay, but maybe you can find something you like. Stepping outside yourself isn't a skill most kids have going into college. And it isn't a skill most kids have when they graduate.

Stepping outside yourself is absolutely teachable, and should absolutely be part of a required course in life skills.