Prompt: Carson Phillips - "There are imaginary numbers now. Are there unicorns in the next lesson? Can somebody please teach me something useful like how to balance a checkbook." - 'Struck By Lighting'
In his short twenty-four years of life, Finnigan Hudson figured that the most important thing he had learned was that high school didn't prepare you for life. Oh, sure it taught you a lot of things and he wasn't an advocate for dropping out of school but when it came to practical matters, the high school curriculum fell short.
Looking back, he guessed he should have learned that when he was in high school. After all, a sex education class would have taught him that Quinn's story about getting pregnant in a hot tub wasn't possible. Knowing that would have saved a lot of unnecessary trouble. Or perhaps education on the possible outcomes of bullying would have made him and some of his friends think twice about their actions. After all, Karofsky's death threat and later suicide attempt had been eye opening experiences for him.
Then there were those things that life threw at you after you graduated. Finn had only learned how to balance a check book after overdrawing his account three times. He didn't even want to recall the fiasco the first time he had tried to do laundry. How many classmates had he bailed out in college by coming to change a flat tire for them. Some simple lessons in time management would have saved him a panic attack or two and as for creating a class schedule, well he had his stepbrother to thank for managing that feat. Kurt had also taught him about budgeting but that was only after his stepbrother had bailed him of financial troubles more than once.
The list was long and people he had talked to had added things to it that he'd had the fortune of being taught at home. Still wasn't part of the purpose of school preparing kids to make it on their own?
As he sat and waited for the school board's verdict on his proposal of a knew Home Economics Class, working title The Practical Things In Life, Finn could only hope he had done a proper job in presented his case to them. There was no way one teacher could reach all of today's youth, but if he did his job right, perhaps it would spread to other schools. Even if it didn't, if he was allowed to teach this class then at least he was sending a handful of students out into the world better prepared to face it than he had been.