I believe that K-12 education, while serves its many purposes and has its set of pros and cons for students and their futures, I believe it does not adequately prepare all students for college. From my experience, throughout college, I have had to learn everything from the ground up, and only seldom did I refer back to what I learned in high school, let alone the years prior. High school can truly be a great experience for many people socially; it’s where students can escape to if they have a less than adequate home life, or a place to meet friends, get involved, or play sports. Not many people get to experience sports post-high school, which is a big pro for high school itself. Seeing the same people everyday for 7+ hours is a great way to meet new friends and staying in contact with people. However, post-high school is different, due to the fact that classes are no longer all day, everyday, and adult lives are far more complicated than high schoolers’. As a result, the social aspect of high school can be seen as a far more effective way to get to know people, more so than college. The same goes for the prior grades, such as elementary and middle school, for the same reasons. Yet, these earlier educational years may not be as effective academically as they are socially. For me, I believe elementary school, middle school, and high school all were filled with busy work and arbitrary classes that did nothing to help me later on. For example, throughout my life, math gave me anxiety and feelings of inadequacy. I myself was double blocked in math in 8th grade, which had a stigma around it and it made me feel like I was a lesser student because I could not grasp math as well as others. As a result, I despised math, which made it more difficult to learn it. My major has nothing to do with math, so all of the years spent doing math classes did nothing to assist with what I really wanted to do in my life. It’s understandable to have students learn the basics of arithmetic because knowing those skills is essential for having a productive adult life, but to a certain point. The curriculum for high schoolers is arbitrary and shouldn’t be as rigid as it is and should allow for more freedom of what to choose, based on one’s own interests and future goals. However, even the classes that did align with my goals did not do enough to prepare me, because of the actual content and the omissions that take place in the curriculum. I’ve always enjoyed history and I knew I wanted to do something with history, which is what I’m working on now. However, we were given a safer, white-washed version of history that did nothing to truly teach me about the real history. As a result, I have had to completely relearn all of what I thought I had known about history from the ground up in college. In summary, I believe that the K-12 educational experience does not do enough to prepare for all students success in college. The curriculum is too rigid and outdated in its standards, which can leave some students behind and feeling inadequate and unwilling to learn, or misled when it comes to college. However, a positive, at least for me, is the social element to K-12, due to being around the same people all day and everyday, which is not something that is experienced in college.