High School: What was the point?

It has been a while since graduating high school and I never understood what the true purpose it was to serve. I was one who believed that school served little purpose since many of knowledge taught today can easily be found on the internet and bought into viewpoints of YouTube videos questioning the purpose of school. I also saw social media accounts posting comparisons of classrooms in the 20th century and the 21st century. Fast forward to the present and while high school did appear useless, I am going to defend that there is something useful lessons everyone can learn from the few years during that time.

How Good Is Your Work Ethic?

There was a reason teachers often force you to check up or set due dates for just the research notes of a project. Once you graduate, there is no one to actively spot you. Many of you reading this will be going into post-secondary and the professors are not going to check up on you. The assignment will be given and you will be expected to hand in the assessment by the due date. High school teachers will chase you down or email parents about missing schoolwork. Professors will not do that because you are a legal adult. This freedom with less 'mini-deadlines' maybe better if you do not drag everything to the final 24 hours; however, this will not work if this has became your habit in school. Universities will ask for more professional sources (ie. Scholarly Journals) meaning simply including 17 news articles and professional looking blogs will land you a low or failing mark. This is the same with the workplace. The employer may briefly check up on you but only to see if you have any questions or concerns. They are not going to constantly remind you about deadlines and will not ask for detailed updates about if you are 90% or 20% finished.

How do you judge a book?

When you finish a book, how long does it take for you to say if what you read was good? How long after you watch a YouTube video do you give it a like or dislike? Probably like within a few seconds to minutes after spending the time to consume the content. This is the same reality with your job and the paper you wrote in the marketing class. The teacher or the grading assistant may only look at your paper for a few minutes before deciding if your work earns an A- or C+. It will not matter if you spent 5 days or 5 hours working on the assignment. When you submit work to your employers, no one cares that you spent one more hour than your co-worker. They will mainly care about the results. High school teachers are more lenient because they will remember seeing you working hard and asking insightful questions in class but professors are more impartial since they look at 100+ students and mainly lecture during class time. This does not mean to force yourself to 'learn faster' but to show that high school teachers often are less tough on grading since they see the hard work and effort by students. This is just a reminder to not to let your guard down after graduation as the real world cares more about results not the time you spent doing it.

High school will actively help you and give the resources needed to succeed. The real world is not going to do that for you. University and employers will give you the basic resources but that is all. Anything else you need will require you to go seek out and find the best support for you.