As a senior in high school involved in multiple national honor societies, I was surrounded by people who devoted hours upon hours a week to volunteering at the local hospital or one of many nursing homes. They told heroic stories of the connections they made with their Bingo buddies or the great connections they were making through spending hours filing paperwork so that the nurses could move on to more important tasks.
Immediately following these heart-warming tales were the comments about how volunteers were so close to getting their 40 service hours for the national honor society or how good these hours will look on their college applications and resumes.
Student-run volunteer organization hopes to enrich lives in Madison community with philosophy
But this defeats the sole purpose of volunteering: donating your time and efforts to better the lives of others, and receiving nothing in return. One should not have to be incentivized by personal gain or the bragging rights that come from “selflessly” donating their precious time to volunteer.
Students who spend their time volunteering solely for personal gains tend to, for lack of a better term, half-ass these precious, resume padding service hours. Sitting at a desk for five hours doing homework and frantically pretending to file paperwork when your supervisor walks by is not volunteering. Texting the entire time you’re supposed to be playing Bingo with sweet old people is not volunteering.
I have always been a firm believer that one should be passionate about whatever they are investing their time in, whether it’s the subject you choose to major in, the activities you do in your free time or, in this case, the places and people for which you volunteer.
The drive to seek out organizations and causes that you are willing to spend your time at should be motivated by a belief in the cause they are advocating and an actual desire to help others, rather than adding another self-serving cushion to your resume.
The concept that certain high schools have adopted, and that has been swirling around college campuses requiring a certain number of service hours to graduate while stemming from a good place, is a flawed concept. Requiring students to attain a certain number of hours transforms the act of volunteering from something they seek out to another homework assignment to check off the to-do list at the end of the week.
Instead of requiring volunteer hours for national honor societies or for graduation from either high school or college, institutions should preach the benefits of volunteering and allow students to pursue the opportunities on their own. Additionally, volunteering should not be seen as a badge of honor for those who do it and a strike against those who do not.
Volunteering is undoubtedly a beneficial experience for those who choose to pursue it, but being forced into it, either directly or indirectly, detracts from the actual purpose of the endeavor and makes volunteering more about self-gain than about helping others.
Aly Niehans ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in international studies and intending to major in journalism.
