This December, I will walk under the arches with degrees in English and journalism, but with a distinct fear that, in many ways, I am not ready to face the world.

I’ll have my degrees, but I will have no idea how to negotiate a car loan or fill out my own taxes.

Obtain a mortgage?

Plan an investment strategy for the rest of my life?

Even understand the financial world that will make such an impact on my future happiness and well being?

Forget it.

I’m not the only one feeling a little left out.

While our respective colleges do a great job to prepare us for our professional futures, there are many life lessons that never come our way. While UGA policy ensures every student must meet certain requirements in English and government, nothing guarantees UGA graduates will be able to do important things like balance a check book, do their taxes or even locate Iraq on a map.

Some individual colleges – the Terry College of Business for example – offer sporadic training courses in everything from interview skills to cover letters, and the UGA Career Center offers advice on résumé writing everyday. Students can even take courses on career planning, which teach these lessons for credit.

But none of us have to take advantage of these programs. In all of my time here I’ve only had one résumé help session, and I honestly didn’t find it that helpful.

So why not combine these efforts into one mandatory class? In order to graduate, in addition to English and political science, each student would take one or two general knowledge classes.

These courses would teach basic finances, how the government works, interview skills and other information necessary for any individual to be successful.

Like current requirements, students could test out of the classes if they proved proficient in the fields covered by the class. This would also ensure students needing more specified help could take the currently-offered university (UNIV) courses offered in writing and other commonly troublesome fields.

For liberal arts majors like me who can’t seem to get a grasp on economics, training in loans and financial strategies would serve us far more than another class on Shakespeare.

I know that if someone were to show me the process – to actually take me through the steps before I had to do it with real money – I’d pick it up pretty quickly.

I don’t want to feel lost when my future co-workers start to talk about mortgage payments and school taxes based on mills. I’m certain no one wants to lose out on a job they love just because they don’t know the proper format of a cover letter.

There’s more to the world than work. If college is to prepare us for the world, we need something more than just information. We need basic skills to make life a little easier in a complex time.

- Stephanie Jackson is a senior from Birmingham, Ala., majoring in newspapers and English.