“Education that Excites”

“This phone cost me an arm and a leg” should not be taken literally, texting while driving is one of the on-road dangers we are taught about as we enter young adulthood however the plethora of driving distractions is so immense. Entering high school the PSA’s were always about the dangers of the continuous pings, dings, and other things vibrating from our phones, we are taught how susceptible we are as young people to the friends on the other line calling over and over as we drive home from school. To be frank, these facts and statistics never scared me, the number of deaths was too large to imagine, those deaths were numbers. Not me, I could never be me, these numbers couldn’t possibly be individuals with lives and friends and family who loved and cared for them. There were so many unnamed faces whose lives did not affect ours. Until my guardian is driving me to school one day, access to the freeway is needed to get to my school, then a semi-truck comes barreling into our lane because he isn’t paying attention to us. The side of the car is nearly missed, and at the edge awaited a steep fall we couldn’t have come back from. As we come home, the kid down the street barrel down a suburban road, going 45 in a 25, crashed over the curb, and skidded by us. I can still hear the screech of the tires, while my guardian and I sit there petrified, the neighborhood kid who used to teach me hopscotch was unfazed as he continued driving. As I write this my family is playing a compilation of road rage videos for laughs, now the approximate 400 texting and driving deaths a year seem sickeningly realistic.

My friends whom I sat shoulder to shoulder with when listening to these PSA’s grab food or coffee (especially from a certain green mermaid) and then come to school with it half-eaten then have the audacity to wonder why they ran over the curb. Eating is distracting enough, our neurology was not designed to multitask, our brain can only switch between 2 focus points and that rapid rate slows in the morning when a student’s REM sleep is already disrupted due to hormones promoting growth. In this instance, there are 2 recipes, one for the coffee ordered and one for disaster. And yet there is hope, in a class meeting with the counselor only a few girls had their license, not for a lack of driving enthusiasm but when inquired about it one on one with the majority of girls that did not the answer was almost always “I don’t have enough preparation, I’m not ready to drive”. Saftey is evidently important as drivers come out of a post-lockdown funk, and the majority of students understand the power that comes with the ability to drive.

To no one’s surprise, I waited a while before I began learning how to drive, and within the first hour of my parents beginning the lessons I had gained unimaginable confidence. I was so sure I could drive within a neighborhood safely until I a cat ran across the road and startled me. The Dunning Kruger Effect hit me like a metaphorical truck, within less than an hour I had completed the mental gymnastics necessary to convince myself that I was more than educated enough to drive everywhere except the freeway. Becoming what I once feared, what I continue to fear because the once far way reality was literally at my fingertips. All the individual preparation, the youtube videos, the online readings, nothing had truly prepared me for the experience. Every student understands the importance of self-study, but only intelligent students appreciate a good professor. Professional divers education is necessary, my first time attempting to drive (with facilitators) would have been a less emotional experience. The proper education given by professionals can guide not only the informational aspect of the driving experience but to insights that no other mentor/tutor can give.

We are taught to keep our phones on silent, to keep sunglasses in the car for those blinding days, to not read the billboards and always read the road signs, to (as teenagers) have an adult in the vehicle at all times. We are not taught the value an experienced educator has on the ability to comprehend safe driving techniques and emotional literacy. That phone may have cost an arm and a leg but the cost of answering it is always so much more.