I've become an extremely opinionated person lately. I don't know where it came from, just all the sudden, I was saying exactly what I thought and I quit being so afraid of what others might think of my opinions. I started thinking about world issues and my rights and how they coincide with the rights of others. I thought about how everybody's rights make this country either good or bad.
I've been complaining for over a year now about a program at my school known as service learning. It was decided by the school board that everybody from the class of 2010 and below would have to complete 40 hours of community service before graduation. The 40 hours would be divided into at least 10 hours a year. It wasn't supposed to affect the classes of 2009, 2008, or 2007. Unfortunatley, last year (my junior year), I was forced to sit in homeroom with the rest of the juniors, Pryor-W while the freshmen did their service requirements. We played bingo all year. I complained the entire time about how it wasn't fair they were forcing anybody to do community serice. I still maintain that it is a bad idea because some kids are going to love it but most are going to hate it. I don't see how somebody could write down forced community service on a college application and act all noble about all their time served when it was a graduation requirement.
Either way, last year's service learning was a flop. It was total anarchy from the 10th through 12th grades because it wasn't a graduation requirement. We got into service learning yesterday, this time it' seniors J. Phillips-Sharpe, and we're just staring at each other until we were ordered to brainstorm a project we could do since our only other option is ACT prep. ACT prep is useless for seniors at this point. Somebody tossed out the idea about doing something take care of our soldiers overseas. The geometry classes have already adopted a soldier, so there's no reason we can't do the same time. And actually, between 90 seniors, we could adopt quite a few. 90 people could adopt an entire unit; a unit from Tennessee, some of our own.
Today, I'm ashamed of myself.
I've been whining and complaining about MY time being used for this service learning program. I've been so caught up in feeling like MY rights have been stomped on that I haven't given any thought to who I could help by way of this program. There's thousands of troops over there in the middle east risking life and limb for my right to be pissed off that my day got interrupted. And of course, I have to remember that their LIVES and the lives of their families have been interrupted by the war.
The school requires I give up 10 hours. For our troops, I'll give up as many as it takes to make sure they know that we haven't forgotten them.
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Service learning and just the whole concept that it looks good on a college application is a stupid idea. It just takes away from the people who truly want to help. I don't believe that doing the right things for the wrong reasons is right. It's really nice that you changed your mind about it, though. It's really selfish to get angry that you're required to do service. I just think it shouldn't be required because it's completely unnecessary and even useless.
i think its great that you want to support are troops i have a cousin over there i really appreciate it. im sure youve been working hard . what is the ACT? well oh well will someone wright me back and tell me what it is !
thanx catie