High school should be a step that prepares students for the future, not a place to test how many AP classes you can take in a year. Although the purpose of education may be open to interpretation, many would agree with the statement that its purpose should be to prepare students for their future. With this in mind, there should be more of a spotlight on life-skill focused classes.

Although several life-skill ROP classes are offered on campus, many students are too overwhelmed with the number of required or AP classes they need to take in a year to even consider taking on another course. In addition, as society puts more weight on arts, sports and other extracurricular activities, the one or two free periods that students have fill up before they even have a chance to think about taking classes that will actually prepare them for the future.

Specialized courses that give students life skills are just be as important as those AP English, mathematics, history and science classes. One example of a life-skills class provided on campus is the accounting class. In this ROP class, students learn how to deal with money in real life.

“In accountings, I learned  how to process financial accounts and statements for record and how to manage your own money,” senior Alisson Wu said. “I think these are the skills that should be taught more at school because these skills will actually help me in the future.”

Classes like these not only provide students with important life skills, but also provide them with an opportunity to get exposed to their possible future careers and gain an idea about a different range of fields.

“Taking this class made me realize the essence of accounting and actually got me interested in pursuing a major in it,” Wu said.

Learning how to communicate thoroughly and collaborate with other people is often more important than memorizing names and dates of historical people and events, and learning how a credit card works is generally more useful in life than learning how to use a graphing calculator to find the antiderivative of a given equation. By putting more focus on these specialized courses that students actually need, students will be better prepared to succeed in the future.