How many times in high school while some boring teacher rambled on and on about something pointless did you stop and think to yourself, “I AM NEVER GOING TO USE THIS IN REAL LIFE!”? Because I know I did.

Things we learned in high school that we never use (unless you’re a mathematician or history museum tour guide):

1. What numbers are prime and what numbers are not prime

2. The many uses of symbolism are found in The Great Gatsby

3. What year Lewis and Clark started their expedition in America

4. The atomic symbol for potassium

5. How to solve a quadratic equation

I swear that I used to know all the answers to these less-than-exciting topics, but over the years, that knowledge went out the window. Sometimes I wish that we had been taught more useful things like how to survive your first year of college or how to change a tire (still don’t know how to do this). Luckily, we here at CollegeCandy have found a list of The 10 Most Important Things They Didn’t Teach Us In High School.  Enjoy!

In reality, though, more than half of Princeton’s student body is on financial aid, and a very large percentage of that is on nearly 100% financial aid. In addition to that, students spend a lot of time in the summer traveling to developing countries, doing community service in struggling neighborhoods, and generally getting their hands dirty. And yet, the myth persists…and for good reason.

There are a lot of different ways people can be “sheltered.” Ivy Leaguers may not all be rolling in wealth, but they still have an embarrassing lack of practical knowledge across the board. Because most of us spent our young lives with our noses stuck in books or playing some sport obsessively, we don’t really know how to, well, get along in the real world.

Most of us can’t change a tire, balance a checkbook, buy health insurance, or even iron a shirt properly. We take our laundry home for the parents to do whenever possible, and we hold off getting our hair cut until we can get home too. We’re good at buying the stuff we need online, but don’t ask us to pick out the right screws from a hardware store or a good cut of meat from the butcher. We’re learned and ridiculously mature in some ways, and yet so unaware in many others.

I know the Ivy League is all about giving students a top-notch liberal arts education, but it would be great if they could give us a little practical knowledge as well; the stuff we didn’t have time to learn from our parents because we were too busy studying for the SAT’s. I say, if we’re going to be the leaders of tomorrow, we ought to know how the world really works on the micro level.

We should be able to take a class on real world knowledge, whether it’s fixing a leaky faucet, cooking, or tying a full Windsor knot in a tie. Because the college life may involve memorizing the events that led up to the Civil War, or surfing the internet for some answers, but one day we’ll suddenly be expected to know about Grown-Up Stuff, and who’s going to teach us that?