Dear kids,

Someday you’ll need to know exactly what you’re learning right now.

I’m not talking about math or spelling or reading, although you may be learning these things, and you will need them. (I will say, though, that if math is involved, I only hope it’s in the context of baking chocolate chip cookies.) I’m talking about the AP Life Skills classes you didn’t know you signed up for. (Probably because you didn’t.)

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Someday you’re going to need uncommon patience. You’re going to need to know how to wait past good and better to get to best.

Someday, you’re going to need extraordinary perseverance. You’re going to need the stick-to-it-iveness to keep running your race when what you really want to do is lie down on the track.

Someday, you’re going to need inconvenient selflessness. You’re going to need to sacrifice what makes life easier for you in order to make life possible for someone else.

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Someday, you’re going to need elastic adaptability. You’re going to need to hold onto the why of what you’re working toward even if the what, where, when, and how shift wildly.

Someday, you’re going to need uncharacteristic perspective. You’re going to need to be a voice for the big picture when the crowd is getting hung up on the details.

Someday, you’re going to need improbable hope. You’re going to need to look at the facts and then look beyond them at the future.

Someday, you’re going to need to know these expensive lessons life is teaching you now.

Some job or relationship or challenge or dream will have these as its prereqs, and there they’ll be, on your transcript. You’ll do the job or feed the relationship or meet the challenge or make the dream come true. Someone will say, “Where did you learn to do that?” And you’ll tell them, “I took a class on it one time.”

This post originally appeared on Guilty Chocoholic Mama