Adulting 101: The Life Skills You Didn't Learn in School

From taxes to relationships, master the stuff that actually matters.

What did you study in school? Probably the basics: English, math, maybe some specialized knowledge if you went on to higher education. But how many classes did you take on building a credit score, doing your taxes, having a healthy relationship, or finding your passion in life? Probably not many.

Because while these are things would be incredibly useful to know in your twenties and beyond, for some reason our education system seems to skip over basic life skills.

Enter Raffi Grinberg. The cofounder (with Jonathan Haidt) of the Constructive Dialogue Institute, Raffi created a wildly popular course at Boston College called Adulting 101, helping students build the real-world skills they never formally learned. Now, he’s bringing that guidance to the rest of us with his new book, How to Be a Grown Up: The 14 Essential Skills You Didn’t Know You Needed (Until Just Now).

Below are five of Raffi’s big ideas to help you level up at life, no matter what age you are now.