Like the majority of the Barnstable High School seniors, I was not looking forward to taking a health and wellness class and stressed immensely about where it was supposed to fit in my schedule. It seemed like such a chore taking up an entire block for a class that I felt I did not need to take. Had the decision to phase out the wellness credit requirement been made last year, I would have been ecstatic. But this year I decided to take the school’s Social Issues course, and my opinion on the necessity of a wellness credit has changed entirely.

Time, GPA, and relevancy: all things that many other BHS students and I worried about in regards to taking a health and wellness course. Being 18 years old and knowing everything the world had to offer (absolutely no sarcasm whatsoever), I felt that taking a wellness course was unnecessary. I already sat through uncomfortable health lessons on the biology of life when I was a mere fifth grader. What else could I possibly learn in a health and wellness class that would have any relevancy to my life that I didn’t already know?

The truth is that there was a lot I didn’t know. My Social Issues class has discussed everything from personality types, coping mechanisms, setting goals, and maintaining the safety of our well-being. I was shocked to see how ill-prepared some of my classmates and I were in regards to knowing we need to be on our own next year. I am also sure that we horrified my teacher with some of the seemingly obvious questions we asked her. I had thought that my middle school health class had done it’s job. The problem with a middle school health class is that, though it is a great introduction, at 12 years old no one is mature enough to handle and take advantage of some of the information they offer.

It is important that our students go into the world knowing more than just how to analytically address the downfall of a tragic hero or how to derive logarithms. Like many have argued, I believe that the true way to learn is through experience. That being said, sending our youth into the world blind and hoping they learn through experience is probably not the best mechanism.

I have faith that with a required freshman or senior health seminar, Barnstable students would thrive in today’s society. Getting rid of the wellness credit may seem like a burden lifted off the BHS students, but the truth is that that decision more damage than our future.