Adulting 101: Learn how to live your life here

Humans are one of the smartest creatures to ever exist, yet we fail to comprehend how to boil an egg. Our forefathers must be so proud and disappointed at us right now.

A prestigious university on Ontario recently established an adulting course for students who lack the braincells to take care of themselves. A psychologist blames overprotective parents for not letting children run those outdoor lemonade stands.  

It all makes me wonder: are we really the future our ancestors expected? 

Adulting 101 is being implemented by University of Waterloo to teach Gen Z university students basic life skills. In fact, they even added an adulting guide that they can use to help separate their colours from their whites, navigate buses and their way to the checkout of the grocery store. Who knows—maybe in the future, the guide will add tips on how to differentiate shrimp and prawn. 

As far as I can remember, I’ve been ‘adulting’ mostly to survive my parent’s next lecture and possible slipper session. I was taught these life skills through my father’s passive-aggressive nagging and his expertise in slipper throwing. Doesn’t every parent nag their children and teens to do their homework and chores, lest the risk the harrowing wrath of the kiddy slammer?  

So how did Gen Z fall behind on the skills our parents practically branded into our souls? 

Gen Z-ers are proclaimed as “digital natives.” According to a book written by a social psychologist Johnathan Haidt, the internet and helicopter parenting are to blame for Gen Z’s lack of life skills. Kids weren’t just banned from opening lemonade stands at their front yard— they were metaphorically leashed onto their beds and literally given access to TVs and gadgets as windows for the outside world. All in the name of safety, of course. 

Perhaps those “when I was a kid” stories from Gen X parents weren’t so bad after all. It’ll be a shame for the next generations to hear those stories from Gen Z parents now, because they’ll probably say, “When I was at university, your grandma enrolled me to an adulting course during the summer,” instead of telling their children they used to wrestle with middle aged Karens during their time as a cashier at Safeway. 

I hope this doesn’t rub people the wrong way. I’m sure the course is at least kind of helpful. It can help you with your taxes, learn how to stabilize your work-life balance, and know the difference between a credit and a debit card. These are all lessons that aren’t typically taught by teachers or parents.  

That’s why I feel bad for the people who graduated university and had to figure out adulting all on their own. Because in the foreseeable future, universities would have made specializations in ironing clothes, tax management and oil change. They could’ve gotten certificates as a physical reminder of how good they are at being adults.  

In the next twenty years, universities might offer PhD for Bed Making, with minors for Reading Street Signs and saying ‘No’ to scams.  

Perhaps people would take chores more seriously when they figure out the janitor has a degree for garbage sorting.  

Nevertheless, robots could wind up taking over soon, so all these adulting skills might just go to waste. If Gen Z and the next few generations manages to invent real life cyber-nannies, then the lack of life skill crisis would be solved immediately. It wouldn’t be a shame if you let your android mow the lawn for you. 

I feel bad for the people who have had to learning how to live like an adult all on their own with not help from either their own parents or courses like these. It must’ve been a relief to them when they saw the news that help is on the way. 

Of course, we’re all humans in the end. Not everyone knows how to cook, and not everyone knows how to change a tire, especially when they don’t own a car. That doesn’t mean everyone lacks the skill to learn how. But it does tell us something about humanity; we hold great, prestigious achievements but greater, nonsensical blind spots.

Adulting 101 can be our modern “Book of Life.” Or maybe it’s the final proof we traded basic common sense for a bunch of QR codes. 

Cover Image: Pexels / cottonbro studio