4 Life Lessons You Don't Learn In School

We spend a significant part of our lives in schools and colleges as we’re growing up. Naturally, this phase of life has a huge influence on how we turn out to be as adults. But even though school teaches us so much about so many different things, there are essential life lessons that we are just not taught.

To shed light on the most important lessons that school doesn’t teach us from my experience, I have prepared the following list:

1 | Life Is Highly Unpredictable

I mean just look at this COVID-19 pandemic! If you told me 4 months ago that the whole world would shut down, I would’ve karate-slapped (is that even a move?) you in the face.

In school, you have textbooks that you’re supposed to learn from. And your test questions are more or less related to the topics you learn in your class. So, you have a general idea about what to expect in an examination.

This is not how life works. Someone wise once said, “Reality is stranger than fiction.” This couldn’t be any truer.

Throughout your work and personal life, situations will crop up that you could never have imagined. And you have to deal with them in real-time without any preparation whatsoever. It is this unpredictable nature of life (and how to deal with it) that is never taught in schools. 

2 | It’s Okay To Fail

Failing on a test is a huge no-no when you’re in school. In fact, depending on the country you’re from, your whole student life can revolve around just doing well in your exams. And failing is a nightmare for most.

 If you apply the same thought process in real life, you won’t be able to walk two steps. Life is all about trial and error for the most part. That’s because there are no textbooks for life. And so, failure is a more common phenomenon than most would like.

 Life teaches you that it’s okay to fail. You just need to learn, get back up, and try again. Unfortunately, this is not what most schools teach.

3 | Question Everything

This hits home hard. The education system in most places in the world has been reduced to memorizing information and regurgitating it while taking your tests.

The natural sense of curiosity in young people is seldom fostered. The ability to question things rather than merely accepting what you’re told has become the norm.

This is dangerous on so many levels. In real life, you have to look at everything and everyone through many lenses of skepticism. Nothing is black and white. Everything is a different shade of gray. So, there is a need to question everything. Unfortunately, for most, life teaches this the hard way.

4 | No One Cares About Your Grades

In the real world, nobody cares about what grades you got in school. Out here, it’s the skills, knowledge, and passion, and determination to make things happen that matter above everything else. The picture above is a collage of just a few very successful people who were poor students in school and would often fail exams.

When a client is looking to hire your company for a project, they won’t ask what grades you got in school. They will ask what your company can deliver. They will ask what problem you can solve, and if you can solve it for them that’s all they care about.

This usually comes as a shock for most people graduating out of high school and college. But it’s not their fault, is it? They have been conditioned from their childhood to care only about grades. Only if schools were more focused on preparing people to face the real world.

To Wrap Up

As we eventually discover, these real-life lessons are far more important and enlightening than those we learn in school. It is these that help us deal with the myriad of situations that life throws at us on a constant basis. No wonder the transition from school life to the real world is rough for most people.

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