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DURHAM -- Go ahead. Memorize the quadratic formula. You know you want to. Just remember -- while it may help you pass that algebra test -- it won’t help you find an apartment, file your taxes or survive a business dinner intact.

Nor will the fact that you once lit a Bunsen burner or dissected a frog in science class.

Untold value aside, diplomas have their limits. Unless you learned life skills -- like how to establish good credit or which fork to use -- you may be perplexed after high school or college.

"Numerous colleges have orientation for their incoming freshman, but few have disorientation seminars for their outgoing seniors," said Jesse Vickey, a 1997 Duke graduate.

Bent on filling the life-skills gap, Vickey and his wife, Nicole, a fellow Duke grad, launched Cap & Compass in 1999. The seminar-giving couple teamed up with Wake Forest grad Andy Ferguson to pen the newly released book, "life after school. explained."

Fun, funny and easy-to-grasp, their seminars and book give grads the lowdown on practical matters, like dining etiquette, HMOs, money management, taxes and renting an apartment. Vickey hatched the idea for the biz after graduating and moving to New York City, where he worked on Wall Street. Despite a solid education, he kept bumping into real-life scenarios he’d never learned to navigate.

"My first day on the job I was given a W-4 form and I had to put down a zero, one or two," Vickey said. "When I asked the HR representative what to do, she said, ‘Well, it’s up to you.’"

Hardly the help he was seeking.

So, Vickey gained life skills through trial and error, family and friends. For Georgina Okerson, a 2000 Duke grad, "slow and painful trial and error" describes it. While grateful for her library job at Duke, she’s yet to find her professional niche. Colleges should offer "a little common sense about careers" and more of a real-world connection, she said.

While life-skills wish lists vary, she’s not alone.

Seventy-three percent of 125 surveyed college students said they don’t feel college prepares them for the practical skills they need most after school, Vickey said.

What real-life lessons do you wish you’d learned in school? The Herald-Sun asked Duke students and Durham residents at large. (See sidebar for more on that topic.)

Some said they wish they’d learned more about how to get and keep a job, cope with work and achieve a better balance between professional and personal lives.

"It’s really difficult not to bring work home, and home to work, because you’re still the same person," said Durhamite Sylethia Davis, a 28-year-old accounts payable processor. "I don’t know if it’s something that can be taught at school, but it would be helpful."

Several Duke students said they turn to mom and dad for help in figuring out "financial stuff," like credit, debt, interest rates and student loans, while the post-college crowd said they learned the hard way.

"I would like to know how to do my taxes, because my mom does that for me," said Duke sophomore Neena Swarup, a biomedical engineer major. "Basic money management, IRAs, what is a 401K? I’ve heard of these things, but I don’t really know how to go about it."

Money matters topped many students’ life-skills wish lists.

"There are a lot of things about financial management that I don’t understand at all like taxes, tax forms and what’s going on with my student loans," said David Hsu, a political science major.

One course he doesn’t need is Laundry 101, thanks to plenty of pre-college practice at home.

"I’m very good at laundry," Hsu said. So good, in fact, "I thought I was the laundry king when I first came to college. I thought I was cool, like separating the colors and reading the labels."

His laundry ego shrunk a size or two after a humbling experience freshman year.

"I got a new red shirt and I completely ruined my laundry by turning the whole load pink. It’s a learning process."

Judging by the many minivans clipping curbs on Ninth Street recently, folks could also use a refresher course on parallel parking.

While they’ve yet to cover laundry or parking, the folks at Cap and Compass do a bang-up job of explaining how to nab a decent, safe, affordable apartment.

Anyone who’s moved into a dud will nod along to the book’s obvious-in-retrospect advice, like, " … Try to visit the neighborhood in the day and at night. The night crowd is often dramatically different from the day crowd."

Since the broker’s job is to pump the place up, get the real skinny by privately chatting with tenants, the book suggests. That’s how Nicole learned about a mice epidemic, which -- surprise, surprise -- the broker had failed to mention.

(For more information on Cap and Compass, including how to order the book, which -- plug, plug -- makes a great graduation gift, log onto www.capandcompass.com).

In retrospect, Durham resident Stephen Fraser could have used the section on work attire.

"I went to a granola-hippie college in the Midwest and they never taught me how to dress appropriately," said Fraser, 32. "It took me years to figure it out."

Hippie-granola colleges aren’t the only ones that fail to explain what "business casual" is or what higher-ups mean when they say, "dress appropriately."

Asked where he acquired his post-college, life skills, Fraser joked, "What makes you think I’ve acquired them?"

Well-meaning wisdom dispensers though they may be, mom and dad can sometimes come across as, well, preachy. Even if they don’t, it’s often tough to take advice from mom and dad, because, well, they’re your parents.

Sounding more like a cool, older sibling, the book is packed with information gleaned from pros, like tax accountants, insurance salesmen, car dealers and financial advisors.

The biggest challenge? Making dry topics, like HMOs and taxes, fun. But the authors pulled it off by mixing in quirky humor and sticking to basics. Cartoons and playful illustrations complement the book’s straightforward text.

"I tried to eliminate all the jargon," Vickey said. "I just tried to explain it in plain speak."

Meanwhile, audience participation keeps the seminars lively. When discussing whether to put down a 0,1, or 2 on those darned W-4 forms, "One [audience member] gets to be tax boy and we put a cape and a mask on him," Vickey said. "Then we have somebody else put on a wig and Uncle Sam hat and we have role play." Interest is earned in the form of candy bars.

Things get even wackier in the apartment seminar, where folks learn that picking an apartment from newspaper ads is like picking a date from personal ads, in that you must READ BETWEEN THE LINES. To up the fun quotient, participants play the apartment dating game, where one bachelorette gets to pick between three bachelor pads.

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If I knew then ...

If you could wave a magic wand, what life-skills class would every college add to its lineup?

"‘Don’t Panic!’ (With apologies to Douglas Adams.) Any class about life skills with that title would be a great help regardless of what it taught. Clueless college kids like myself are often frantically terrified at what horrors might await them once their parents stop putting food on their plates. A good life-skills class should go over both finding and getting a job and how to deal with common situations that you will wind up facing in the Real World. Crisis management."
-- Georgina Okerson, Duke library systems employee and Class of 2000 graduate

"Something having to do with interpersonal relationships -- maybe lessons on how to best approach someone you haven’t met before and create a good first impression in business."
-- Tora Unuvar, Duke sophomore, physics major

"A course dealing with nonmaterial, nonfinancial concerns, like how to plan ahead for a family and incorporate religious and spiritual concerns into your life."
-- David Hsu, Duke sophomore, political science major

"I wish they had a class on managing your finances: ‘Money Management After College.’"
-- Neena Swarup, Duke sophomore, biomedical engineer major

"It would be finding the answers within yourself as opposed to taking the advice of others first. I guess I could call it, ‘Know Yourself Best.’ "
-- Sylethia Davis, 28, accounts payable processor, NCCU grad, Durham resident

"A course on approaching life decisions, whether it’s career decisions, who and when to marry, buying a house, planning for kids and planning for retirement -- ‘Life Milestones’ class."
-- Stephen Fraser, 32, writer, Durham resident
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