There are a number of ways students can learn how to file their taxes. Some may look to a family member, artificial intelligence (AI) or the TurboTax Monster –– the one that has lived under your bed since its birth in a disturbing 2018 TurboTax TV ad campaign. However, where young people might not even think to look is at an institution like Georgetown University.
If real-world applicable classes were added to the registrar, they would not have to be boring. Who would want to take TAX-1001 or DIVORCE-1003? Those both somehow sound worse than ECON-1001. Instead, imagine classes like HOW-NOT-TO-DIVORCE-LIKE-KING- HENRY-VIII-1007 or TAXES-AND-PRIVATE-ISLANDS-1008 that blend practical knowledge with intellectual curiosity.
For a school offering over 1800 undergraduate class sections a semester, it is difficult to find courses that teach real-world skills like filing taxes or navigating the infinite other bureaucratic realities of adulthood. Georgetown should develop more one-credit experimental courses that connect students’ intellectual curiosity to real-world skills.
Georgetown has already implemented some one-credit courses. Namely, the government department offers one-credit skill courses, including “Policy Briefing” and “Thinking Strategically.” The department intends for these classes to create a personalized professional learning path for students as they explore skill development relating to policy, leadership and strategy. However, while these courses are a promising start, they remain limited to a single department. Many other skill-based one-credit courses offered are also limited to graduate students or specific majors. Classes that span across the university would be more useful. Other peer universities, such as Tufts University and the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), accomplish just this.
The university may take multiple approaches to combining intellectual curiosity and practical skills. Tufts University, for example, prioritizes intellectual curiosity exceptionally well with a program called the Experimental College. Through the Experimental College, Tufts students can take one-credit classes that relate niche areas of study to fun topics, such as “The World of Crosswords” and “Designing Your Career Journey.” Georgetown should work towards launching something similar.
A second approach focuses on practical skills rather than intellectual curiosity. UC Berkeley runs a program called DeCal that features one- and two-credit classes allowing students to study niche, real-world topics. Classes include “A Primer on Molecular Biology” and, interestingly enough, a psychology class simply titled “Adulting.”
Georgetown does not need to choose between intellectual curiosity and practical skill-building. Instead, the university could pioneer a new norm. Georgetown could use these classes to chase its beloved Jesuit value of “cura personalis.” “Cura personalis” dictates that a person must care for the whole person, including their unique circumstances and gifts. The whole mind includes both practical and theoretical knowledge. It feels safe to say, given the hours Georgetown students spend in the dark abyss of the library, that the theoretical part is satisfied. The university should also give students a low-commitment, unique opportunity to help them cultivate the practical part.
While Georgetown often celebrates its academic rigor and wide array of courses, the addition of a small experimental program would hardly threaten that tradition. The university could easily borrow the playful curiosity encouraged by programs at Tufts and combine it with the practical spirit found in student seminars at Berkeley. Imagine a course that combines Tufts’ time travel course and Berkeley’s “Adulting” course. Maybe it explores adulting at different time periods, opening up new, non-ethnocentric realities of growing up.
Suddenly, graduating college may seem more promising when compared to adulting during the era before WiFi — those must have been dark, archaic times. Examples like this show how experimental courses could make practical life skills part of Georgetown’s intellectual culture. By the end of the semester, students would still indulge their intellectual curiosity, but they would also walk away knowing how to manage money, read contracts and navigate the kinds of decisions that await them after graduation.
Caden Larrenaga is a sophomore in the College of Arts & Science.
