{"id":24240,"date":"2019-07-11T19:07:09","date_gmt":"2019-07-11T23:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=24240"},"modified":"2019-07-11T19:07:19","modified_gmt":"2019-07-11T23:07:19","slug":"intro-to-adulting-offers-important-life-skills-for-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/intro-to-adulting-offers-important-life-skills-for-future\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cIntro to Adulting\u201d offers important life skills for future"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jennifer Quirke was\n20 years old when she first tackled a particularly daunting-looking washing\nmachine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Living on her own for\nthe first time as a student, she had come from a house where her mom was all\ntoo happy to do the laundry, but when the time came, Ms. Quirke found she had a\ngap in her \u201cadulting\u201d knowledge that had to be filled fast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And those gaps have\nonly gotten wider as more teens over the years made their way to adulthood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether it is how to\nproperly iron a dress shirt or file taxes, Ms. Quirke and the Aurora Public\nLibrary are stepping up to give teens and young adults the knowledge they need\nto get through life that is often overlooked in the school room through: Level\nUp! Intro to Adulting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beginning this\nMonday, July 15, and running through Friday, July 19, the five-day program for\nyouth between the ages of 15 and 20 is designed to \u201chelp you become the\nresponsible adult of your parents\u2019 dreams.\u201d Focusing on food, employment,\nresearch skills, financial literacy, and other miscellaneous life skills, each\nday will feature a different topic and an expert presenter \u201cto help you master\nthe basic skills you\u2019ll need to get grown.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is something we\nhave been thinking about for a few years,\u201d says Ms. Quirke, now Young Adult\nLibrarian at the Aurora Public Library (APL). \u201cNow, we have decided to do a\nweek-long session for the summer. It\u2019s something I\u2019ve heard parents say would\nbe useful, and I\u2019ve also had teens say they think it would be useful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve heard a lot of\nteens themselves say they aren\u2019t happy with their education and the fact\nthey\u2019re not being taught how to prepare their taxes, for instance, but it is\ngoing to be something they will be expected to do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is so much\nfocus in schools on skills that teens aren\u2019t necessarily going to use later,\nand more practical skills can fall by the wayside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey wish more\nattention was given to this,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Topic ideas have been\nbrainstormed over the past few months between Ms. Quirk, APL staff, and members\nof APL\u2019s teen advisory group because, in her words, \u201cWho better to ask but\nthem?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI bring all my program\nideas to the teen advisory group, but this is one in particular they were\nreally helpful in saying, \u2018Yes, I don\u2019t know how to do this,\u201d she explains,\nnoting that one of the skills that came up was the proper care and ironing of\ndress clothes. \u201cI was surprised about some of the things they did know and some\nof the things they didn\u2019t, so I relied very heavily on their input.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also helpful was the\ninput of one of APL\u2019s summer students who has a year or two of university under\nher belt. Asked what she wish she had known before setting off on her own,\nthose suggestions provided plenty of food for thought as this program was being\ndeveloped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEach day has a theme\nand for all of those, the first four days we have an expert coming in,\u201d says\nMs. Quirke. \u201cOn the food day, we have a nutritionist coming in and she is going\nto be talking about food safety, food skills, some easy recipes, shopping on a\nbudget and that kind of thing. Then the last day is more of a more fun day and\nwill have little skills and smaller things that don\u2019t require an entire session\ndedicated to them, so they can go around and try ironing or sewing on a button\nand other things. At the end I would like to know that people learned something\nthey didn\u2019t know already. It\u2019s hard to say. I guess I want people to be more\nconfident at the end and feel they are better prepared for the future and for\nadulthood.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information on Level Up!\n\u2013 Intro to Adulting, including registration, contact the Aurora Public\nLibrary\u2019s Children\u2019s & Young Adult Information Desk at 905-727-9494 x280,\nor email ya@aurorapl.ca.  Sessions take\nplace July 15 \u2013 19 from 3 \u2013 4.30 p.m. Registration is open to teens and young\nadults between the ages of 15 and 20.<\/em><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir Jennifer Quirke was 20 years old when she first tackled a particularly daunting-looking washing machine. Living on her own for the first time as a student, she had come from a house where her mom was all too happy to do the laundry, but when the time came, Ms. Quirke found she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":24212,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/2019-07-11-03.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6iY","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-31 13:24:28","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}