I Wish We Had Studied More Practical Subjects in High School. For Example: Plumbing. While I Have Never Used My Ability to Diagram a Sentence EVER, I Have Needed to Fix a Dripping Faucet.

Clogged Drains in the Kitchen Sink are a Significant Part of Real Life while Calculus is Useless. Classes in How to Balance a Checkbook, Avoiding Credit Card Debt and Filing Income Taxes Would Have Been Valuable.  

One Class they ought to add is Critical Thinking. In a World where there are SO Many People Lying it has been Handy to Know That Logical Fallacies Exist. I Took that Class in College and It Helped Me To WAKE UP! I Realized That It Was a Good Idea to "Think for Myself and Question Authority." For Example: 400,000 People Died from Opioid Overdoses in the USA. But First, They Had to Believe Their Doctor and Buy That Prescription... Remember: Believing Lies Is Not the Best Plan for Life... 

Another Example: "They" Don't Tell You that Owning a Gun Makes Your Family LESS SAFE.  The Increase in Successful Suicides, The Increase in Accidents and The Increase of One Family Member Shooting Another During Arguments TOTALLY OUTNUMBER the Number of Times You Defend Your Family From "Bad Guys." They Lie to You In Order To Increase Profits... WAKE UP! 

A More Subtle Example: TV Advertisements for Prescription Drugs (and Booze, Cars and Trucks) often show Beautiful Young People Doing Ecstatic Dancing! The Hidden Meaning Is That If You Take Their Drug You Will Feel Like Those People in the Ads. Rock Stars, Hang Gliders, Surfers, People Whose Children Just Graduated for College, People Who Won the Stuffed Bear at the Carnival, Mountain Climbers... I Always Turn off the Sound During Commercials and Often it is Impossible to Tell What Disease that Specific Drug is Used to Cure... All I Know is that by Taking The Drug, The Pretty Lead Singer in the Band was able to Cure Her Nausea and Sing and Their Concert was Wonderful... and Everybody Was Dancing WITHOUT DANDRUFF... There is One Ad That Shows BLISSED OUT PEOPLE Releasing Thousands of Fire Filled Paper Bags that Float into the Night Sky... I HAVE Felt Like Those People... ON LSD... However... "One Pill Makes You Larger, and One Pill Makes You Small, and the Ones That Mother Gives You, Don't Do Anything At All... Go Ask Alice... When She's Ten Foot Tall..." - Grace Slick

I Question IF Wayfair Delivers Happiness. Is Consumption of Plastic Crap The Key To True Enlightenment? Did Buddha Use His Credit Card to Order a Load of More, More, More STUFF? Remember: There are Two Ways to Get Everything You Want. Get More or Want Less.   

One Class I Wish I Had Taken in College was How to Use Microsoft Word and Excel. The Teacher said We Could Simpy Take the Final Exam and Challenge the Class and I Did That. If You Passed the Final, You Didn't Have to Attend The Class. Well, I Wish I Had Learned A LOT MORE about those Programs Because... At Work... They were the Most Often Used Programs... and Some Stuff Would Have been Super Handy To Know... Later, I DID Take a Class in Excel Paid for by My Employer... Because we really used that a LOT. We Created Contracts For The Clients to Sign and All the Contracts Had To Be Identical, But With Different Names, Addresses, Dates ETC. One Day, My Boss Told Me that She Had Esased the Word Document She was Working On... Well, It Is Possible to Find an Old Copy, But I Didn't Know How... I Had Never Accidentally Erased My Work so I Just Didn't Know... That Would Have Been an Opportunity To Be The Hero but...   

A great TV Show is "The UnXplained" with William Shatner. Have any of You Done FIREWALKING? I don't understand how it's possible to walk on fire without doing damage to the feet. I Can Understand Not Feeling Pain in a Trance State but... The Lack of Damage is Unexplainable. My Store Manager at Radio Shack Did Firewalking. They all Chanted and Danced into a Trance and then He Did It. It was a Training Exercise for Store Managers Paid for by the Corporation Because... they felt that "If You Can Walk On Fire, You Can Certainly Run a Store." It Was A Confidence Building Exercise. 

In My Experience Prayer and Meditation has been a Total Failure. Nothing Happens at All. I Have Explored Dancing Myself into a Trance at a Carlos Santana Concert and THAT was FUN... But That was All..  One time We Went to a Five Day American Indian Christian Ceremony. Two Hundred Frame Drums and Six Father Drums. I Was Allowed to Play the Father Drum... That TOO Was Fun But In No Way Did I Contact God. Many of the Other People at That Ceremony Were "Slain By The Spirit" and they Fell Down when the Preacherman Touched their Head... but I Felt Nothing... Of Course, I Have Taken LSD at a Grateful Dead Concert and THAT is AMAZING... and All Other Religious Ceremonies Seem LAME After That Experience... It Really Makes Communion at a Christian Church Seem To Be A PATHETIC JOKE... You Eat The Sacred Wafer and NOTHING HAPPENS... Well, Eat a Sacred Wafer at a Grateful Dead Concert and SOMETHING WILL HAPPEN.  Have You Ever Read HAIKU On Acid? You Experience a Tidal Wave of Realization... Meaning... OH! I GET IT! EUREKA! FUN!

Sadly, I Have Never Experienced Anything Unexplainable. No UFO Encounters, NO Near Death Experiences, No Out of Body Experiences, NO Successful Prayer... Nothing... Yes, I ate Psychedelic Drugs and Saw Visions but That is a Real Cause and Effect Event. Not a Contact with God or Extraterrestrials... Even William Wilson, the Founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, Never Had a Contact With a "Higher Power" without Taking Psychedelic Drugs. He Had a "Religious Experience" While on Belladona and Henbane... now, That's some Powerful Dope! Only to be Used under Doctor's Supervision...  

The Only Thing That That I Have Experienced That is Remotely Magical is the Time Effect of Programming a Computer. I Have Been "In The Zone" While Writing Code or Doing Complex Mathematical Computer Art. At School, We All Found that Time Travels Very Fast. You Start Programming and then an Instant Later, The Clock Shows That Hours Have Passed. I Have Also Experienced an Interesting MOOD After Watching the TV Show "Ancient Aliens" for Many Hours... Makes Me Wonder... 

YES, I Have Experienced an Altered State of Consciousness Because of Sex. An Afterglow Does Happen... That Can be Explained by Darwin's Evolution Theory but... I Prefer to Not Explain it at all, Just Enjoy... Relax and Bliss OUT!

I Remember that one Day in the Computer Lab at School I Was Complaining about How Useless Calculus was and a Student said: "Calculus is Essential to the Design of Atomic Power Plants and Bombs. Without Calculus You Just Can't Do IT!" - SO, Not only is Calculus Useful, IT'S EVIL!

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and then the people on Facebook Said...
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  • Ron Kikuchi I took Boys Foods
  • Kat Kelley you 're a genius!
  • Lynn Sanders I guess you weren't in my civics class 1972 where we filled out a federal tax return. Mr. McCloskey
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  • Gregory Laan Remember: Believing Lies Is Not the Best Plan for Life...
  • Tødd Frederick I remember only one time that I had a unit on diagramming sentences and that was in junior high and I was no good at it. But that's not to say that it has no value. Each student responds to different inputs to start thinking critically. Diagramming sentences does have a certain science to it, and it could help some students to become adept at solving problems. But on much more practical terms, communicating in clear English is the foundation of getting ahead in life. Many people of our era can't spell or form a decent sentence or paragraph. So while diagramming a sentence may not be required, all the rest really matters.

    I have two degrees. The first was a BA in business. The second was a blue collar associate degree, which puts an amazing amount of food on my table. The neat thing is that I am one of the few in my field who can write a decent sentence. 

    A plumber and a woodworker need a firm foundation in mathematics. Both need some business acumen. Some of the best things you need in life to get ahead can't be taught in school, you just pick them up during life, like street smarts.
  • Stephanie Lynott That would be called vocational school, of which there are a few. It is a perfect fit for so many students.
  • Renee DeLay-Harsanyi My brother took wood shop and after he retired from the Marine Corps started his own carpentry and handy man business and did very well. There was also metal shop and auto shop. But you do have to learn geometry to do these.
  • Tobar Bernadette If you would of taking Ag mechanics you would of learned plumbing and other house hold things.
  • Tommy Gleason Absolutely agree with the critical thinking. If only kids could learn this early on, then they wouldn't get duped by the politics, religion, and conspiracy theories.
  • Donovan Rhinehart Four years in Mr. Cassel's Industrial Arts class (Metal Shop) got me further in life than any other class I had in high school. When signing up for classes my freshmen year, the school suggested I take something more academic. Fortunately, I did not. In addition to most aspects of metal fabrication, Mr. Cassel taught his students respect, responsibility, confidence, how to shake hands etc... Mr. Cassel made a huge impact on a lot of kids.
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  • Gregory Laan SO, They DID Teach Practical Skills at LGHS... in the AG Department... I Just Missed Valuable Learning by Choosing the Wrong Classes. OOPS!

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