Essay On Community Service

"Volunteering plays a valuable role in shaping how youth learn to interact with their community." (Jamuna Carroll). Many kids do not understand the importance of what volunteering is, and what giving back to their community means. When kids do not understand, they think that there is no point in getting service hours, because they get nothing out of it. On the other hand, there are a handful of kids that love to volunteer and think it is an amazing experience; they need service hours because they learn things about themselves and about other people. The big thing for many colleges today is that many are looking to see if they can play a role in their community. Gretna should require service hours to walk across the stage and graduate, not just

"At first, some kids questioned why this would be required," he said. "But once they realized how beneficial it is, their resistance has been minimal." (Linda Saslow). What many people do not know is how much they will get out of their volunteerism. They learn more about themselves, those around them, and a lot of people find a very good passion through it. The problem with the Nebraska education system is that it does not require kids to have community service hours (High School Graduation Requirements), Iowa, our neighboring state, has adopted community service hours in some school districts and so have many private high schools within both states. Community service hour requirements are dying in our nation as a whole. Only two out of the fifty states still have a very heavy service hour requirement for their graduation requirement. For graduation the requirements need to change within the United States. Giving back to others out has slowed, and in some cases stopped all together. Kids do not understand what volunteering really is anymore, schools do not push it on student like they used to. Gretna High School only requires five hours of service to graduate. For those in National Honor Society, while some schools require their students to have as many as one hundred service hours to graduate from high

For example, Harvard requires their applicants to have a large amount of service hours to be admitted into their school. Schools want kids to have service hours to show that they are committed to their school and community. The Ivy League schools look for students with the ability to set a good example on their campus. Good grades are a big factor to get into an Ivy League school, but they also look for students that have given back to their respective communities. “While I won’t spill all the beans here, what I will say is that service hours can be HIGHLY overrated – it’s the one area that most high school students think about the MOST, which actually matters the LEAST to Admissions officers at Ivy League schools. Instead of focusing on quantity of hours – focus on the TYPES of work that you’re doing, and how that fits into the overall picture that you’re trying to paint of yourself.” (Anonymous). They want you to have all these service hours, but at the same time they could care less about how many you have. They want a person that has done something helpful for their community not something menial like helping out at a dog shelter. At the end of the day the amount hours served is not the big answer, but rather where someone is obtaining their service