Audience: high school students, teachers, and administration

Thrust head first into college, our first taste what the experienced call “the real world”, it can be surprising to find just how unprepared four years of a supposedly rigorous, transitional high school program can render someone. With the transition to university comes a sense of independence students yearn for their whole lives, but also a plethora of personal responsibilities that they frankly aren’t prepared for. Doing laundry, recovering from illnesses, and even attending class on a regular basis, are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of tasks that become so much more difficult away from home. Perhaps one of the most prominent problems, however might be the general lack of a solid financial literacy background for most students on campus here on Penn State as well as around the country.

In a time where college expenses seem to increase by the day, wealth management could not be any more important of a skillset. While some students fall into addiction traps for products or services – Starbucks, fast food, and online shopping come to mind – others can find themselves neglecting life’s necessities, which proves to be detrimental in the long ru. Like with many problems of this nature, an instant solution remains place faith in education to do the job. Unfortunately, with standardized testing and examinations comprising a majority of high school focus for both teachers and students, administrative figures in today’s current secondary education system find little reason to promote the implementation of additional curricula regarding financial literacy. Firsthand experiences in college, however, tell a different story. Mandatory wealth management courses have the potential to instill within students life lessons in spending, saving, and prioritizing. Without any doubt, these types of classes are warranted, and though they might struggle to appeal to all students initially, they will surely expose high school students to smart financial practices, when they need said exposure the most.

Potential sources:

http://www.businessinsider.com/high-schools-teaching-personal-finance-2015-4

https://www.wsj.com/articles/should-college-students-be-required-to-take-a-course-in-personal-finance-1489975500

Body 1 will discuss the advantages financial literacy classes can have for students, including personal life lessons and habits that can be sustained long-term.

Body 2 will go into depth about the advantages financial literacy classes can bring schools in the large picture, including ways that these classes can promote curricular diversity.

Body 3 will go into some of the perceived negatives and challenges  their institution, and ways that the proper institution of classes can avoid these issues.

As part of the two-week Deliberation Nation event, I attended another deliberation which discussed the implications of mental health. While the topic was not the most interesting to me, I wanted to see how other students in Professor Hamilton’s classes were conducting their deliberations. Despite my initially low levels of interest in the topic, I left the deliberation with a better idea of mental health’s role on Penn State’s campus, as well as resources (as well as shortcomings) that I didn’t know our university even had.

The discussion took a few different approaches to tackle the issue. The one, however, which engaged the audience the most, was talking about the ways Penn State could incorporate psychological and mental health education into their own academic curricula. While some people were against the institution of mandatory coursework to teach mental health, I, along with others, were in support of replacing a general education requirement with a low-credit mandatory mental health awareness class, which would be taught by trained professionals and direct students to internal and external solutions to deal with issues. The main positives that I took from these types of solutions were their practicality, and their immense reach to a large portion of the university. Instituting such a class as a graduation requirement would severely decrease the amount of communication and logistic issues students have when dealing with their own mental health problems.

In the broad scope of things, the deliberation really showed me the value of voicing opinions in one’s community. The third pillar of the Schreyer Honors College stresses civic engagement, and I felt that the entire two-week span of Deliberation Nation really lent itself to allowing students to achieve that goal. The deliberation helped me learn about mental health in more ways than I expected, from an individual level to the university-wide level. It also gave me an idea of how a deliberation was to be conducted, and I took some of the positives and negatives from the event and tried my best to incorporate the good things into our own deliberation, which came only three days later. Experiencing a deliberation from both the audience as well as the driver’s seat really gave me the most immersive perspective of the event.