How would you improve Teens?

"Cinderellimouse;c-16337930" wrote:
My annoyance with teens at the moment is that the 'school' system is generic and pointless. It doesn't seem to matter if my teen gets good or bad grades. And the 'homework' is just a box ticking exercise. I'd love active schools! Or at least a choice of schools, like how we could send kids to private school by impressing the headmaster in TS2. But mostly I'd just like more customisation of the school life. Being able to pick classes or subjects to specialise in, so my arty Sims might get an assignment to paint a picture or brush up on their painting skill, or my computer nerd might get programming homework. Just so there's a bit more individuality and customisation. And also to feel like my Sims are going to school and doing their homework for a reason.

I'd like to see some sort of home schooling or maybe bring some elements of the CL job system to education; you could be given the option to go to school as normal or "study from home" then get two or three different tasks, like interview an elder Sim then write essay about life in the olden days, or collect 3 frogs for Biology Lab or 3 plants for Botany. I'd also modify the rabbit hole schools so children only meet other children and teens meet other teens; right now if you do "Meet Friends" at school you wind up meeting both children and teens and that's not very realistic (unless it's a really small school district you rarely have children and teens go to school together at least here in the US). If we do get a University pack, maybe teen Sims with good grades can get a scholarship and/or college credit if they have really good grades, sort of like if you take Advanced Placement classes in the United States.

Teen-only activities: basement bands (since we don't have garages), skateboarding (with a skate park and/or the ability to build our own with ramps, half-pipes and such) andould tie in with a Seasons pack by turning into snowboarding parks in the winter. We've already got the system where you can separate out part of your household funds for owning restaurants or retail stores; maybe that could be adapted to create teen savings accounts where they can save money for college or just moving out on their own. Would give more purpose for the teen part-time jobs, and when they age up to YA they can use that money to pay for college (if we have University) or just to get a head start by adding the savings to the base 20K they currently get. Add in some more worn/second hand furniture (we could get that Starter Home SP that was one of the choices in the Community Pack survey). An actual teen hangout where teens could gather and meet each other without kids or YA+ hanging around would be awesome.

We're not going to get shorter teens at this stage of the game; the work to adjust the clothing to match smaller frames would be way too much work. The height doesn't bother me that much; I've always been shorter than my nieces and nephews anyway. I think unique activities and interactons solely for teens would be enough. Or maybe something similar to the gender filter but for age; have some outfits that are solely for teens, but that can be removed if you're dressing your own Sims or a townie's household.