I spent over a decade in school learning how to calculate the slope of a line…
But no one ever taught me how to do my taxes.

I memorized the periodic table…( with fear along with minuscule understanding about why it matters to know this table).
And I had no clue how interest rates worked.
Or that debt could feel like dating someone who never stops texting.
Or that money is weirdly emotional—the sum of money I have seems integrated with my mood, my emotional and overall health and my ability to think clearly.

And don’t even get me started on mental health. We had fire drills, earthquake drills, even a lesson on how to dissect a frog.
But nobody handed us a manual on what to do when sadness sits on your chest like a second blanket. When we feel stuck, and been feeling that for ages.
Or how to forgive yourself for not being okay.

I wish school had a class called :

“How to Not Burn Out at work.”
Or “Intro to Saying No Without Feeling Guilty.”
Or even just “ The breathing manuals: When Everything Feels Like Too Much.”

And while we’re at it… why didn’t they teach us how to move our bodies just to feel good?

Not for gym class grades. Not for six-packs or Instagram.
Just movement—daily, joyful, sweaty therapy.
Even a ten-minute stretch that makes you go, “Oh wow, I can kiss my knees!.”

Also—genuinely—why did no one teach us how to grow food? Not as a science fair project. Not as a “fun activity.”
But because watching something grow under your care is a quiet kind of magic.
Up to this day, I didn’t know how to grow a single plant, I tried once to raise a mini cacti.. and it died within a week under my care. From that moment on I am convinced that for plants I am less nurturing than the dessert. It hurts me.

And reading?

I read so many books in school- to pass the exam, and I hardly remember anything from that super expensive text book!
Now, I read to survive.
To understand the world. To understand myself.
A good book at the right moment can feel like a therapist, a best friend, and a vacation—sometimes all three.

And writing.
No one told me a blank page could be a mirror.
That it could catch my spiraling thoughts and hand them back to me in a shape I could understand.
That writing could be medicine, could be a way to know myself better. That writing is actually a thinking process, a good writer is a good thinker.

So yeah—school taught me a lot.
But life? Life taught me how to live.

And don’t get me wrong—I’m not here to bash teachers.
Most of them were doing their best inside a system that hasn’t been updated since chalkboards were cutting-edge.
But I am saying… maybe it’s time to redesign the syllabus.

What if school taught us how to be resilient, not just obedient?
How to grow food and grow our minds?
How to pay our bills and protect our peace?

What if school taught every girl that she’s beautiful in infinite, unrepeatable ways?
That her worth is not a mirror, or a number, or the approval of someone else.
That she is already enough—before anyone tells her so.

And what if school taught boys that strength comes out in many different ways?
That tears aren’t weakness.
That they don’t have to armor up just to be accepted.
That masculinity doesn’t have to be a cage.

What if we taught all kids to stand tall before the world starts selling them ways to shrink?

That they don’t need to buy, prove, post, or pose to matter.

Imagine graduating with a diploma and a toolkit:
A budget spreadsheet. A cherry tomatoes plant. A playlist for sad days.
A journal full of unspoken truths.
A quiet confidence in your body.
A loud knowing of your worth.

Now that’s an education.

So here’s to all of us who learned late. Cheers!
Who got tested before we were taught.
Who figured it out the long way, the hard way—the real way.

May we keep learning.
And may we leave something better behind.

Even if it’s just a school that finally teaches meditation before math.

Seftirina Sinambela, M.Hum.