Service in School

The question for this week asked me what I think about colleges teaching about engaged citizenship, which to me sounded a lot like the question, "do you think colleges should require service-learning classes like this one?" I'd like to first talk about service requirements in school in general, since such requirements seem to have become popular in the last decade or two.

Compared to the other students in this class, I have very little experience with community service. The American students especially seem to have completed many hours of service, sometimes on their own but, I think, especially through school. There are a few reasons that I haven't, the primary reason being that I moved around and had special challenges in school, but also because I was annoyed at the way the schools approached community service.

In some cases it was just posed as a school requirement: "you must do this many hours of community service in order to pass this year." To me, this felt like a very empty reason to do it. In my high school, service was not required but "encouraged," and most people just talked about it as something that looks good on college applications and will give you the edge to get in. But at the time, I was too worried about doing well in my actual classes to focus on extras in my resume. There was some talk about "giving back to the community," but seeing as I never really felt like I belonged in the communities that I lived in, this argument didn't really do it for me. Finally, people threw around buzzwords like "communication skills" and "leadership" but never really explained how I would acquire these things by working at the local soup kitchen.

In short, I didn't feel like any of these things applied to me. I sometimes felt selfish for feeling this way, but I also felt like I couldn't help it, and I didn't have the time or energy to deal with these feelings because my life was pretty complicated at the time.

Fast-forward to USF, to this class. I'm a senior and still haven't done any community service, but I feel that now, in this environment, I'm ready to. I feel like this class approaches service in a very different way than I've encountered in the past. Service-learning, a mutually beneficial situation where I hone my skills by helping others, seems much more appealing and satisfying. Also, I've never had an opportunity where someone has helped me find a service job that is best for me. In the past, I've felt overwhelmed when the school said: "go volunteer." I didn't know where to start. I like that USF is providing me with both a service opportunity that matches my skill set and a time-frame to do it in, so I don't have to find extra time in my hectic schedule to do it.

Yes, I think that we should try to learn to be active and engaged citizens. And yes, I think that college is a perfectly appropriate place to learn this, since most people don't get it at home and high schools seem to be approaching it the wrong way. Obviously, academic knowledge is not the only form of knowledge and I think that USF is right to encourage other forms of learning. I just hope that the experience really is as fulfilling as I am expecting it to be, and I'm looking forward to starting.