Every year when it came time to pick out my schedule for the next year, I always came across Living on Your Own. Why it isn’t a requirement is beyond me.

Instead of Living on Your Own being an elective, it should be more of a requirement than Geophysical Science or Personal Fitness; what do I gain by learning which clouds are cumulonimbus or if that rock is igneous or not? And what do I gain from running for nine weeks and swimming for another nine weeks besides being sweaty all day? I can just go to the gym if the Board of Education is really that worried about obesity.

I have taken six years of a foreign language and four years of math, science and English credits, yet I wouldn’t be able to graduate if I hadn’t taken a semester of Personal Fitness. So in order to get my Personal Fitness requirement I had to pay over $300 to take it during the summer, so I could take a class I wanted to take, like Advanced Journalism.

However, because I had to keep what colleges want in mind for my senior schedule, I could not take Living on Your Own.

According to its course description, Living on Your Own teaches you how to budget, pay taxes, look at the costs of insurance, credit, buy a car and find a place to live. This class should especially be a requirement for seniors since most will be going away to college, and they will have to be dependent on themselves; taking this class will give them helpful insight on how to live independently.

Now I have to figure out how to do all these life skills by myself or I have to take a class to learn these skills. Gotta love the common sense behind these requirements though, right?