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I learned in my experience with community service that patience is key, patience both with yourself, other people, and the organization that you are volunteering for. A lot of students want to get their hours done and over with as quickly as possible, and I can understand that. Students who take government are usually in their senior year, and in your last year of high school (especially the spring semester), you just want to ride out your last weeks of high school in your comfort zone and doing the least amount of work as possible. While I personally enjoyed my experience doing community service, the fact that it was required made it a little less rewarding, which is an actual psychological phenomenon, called the overjustification effect. It just felt like I was trudging through it and not actually enjoying it because it was for school rather than an actual act of altruism. It’s not a waste of time to make students participate in after school community service opportunities, because it is a great opportunity to show students that it is not hard to get involved with the community and feel good about doing things that you do not get paid for. Students our age need to realize that it doesn’t hurt to volunteer for free, that it will only feel good to help others in need. These days, people my age are very self-centered and egotistical, so introducing them to these opportunities can be very mind opening to everyone as a whole. On the other hand, I don’t think that 10 hours should be required. Perhaps one 2-hour or so community service opportunity could work, just something to dip your toes in rather than have to commit to something as daunting as 10 hours of unpaid work, as such a workload can be cumbersome at times. 

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The first place that I volunteered at was the Red Cross Blood Drive here at Floyd Central High School. I am a member of our chapter of National Honor Society, so I was asked to participate in running the blood drive as well as giving myself the option to actually donate some of my own blood. I worked in the blood drive as an “escort.” It was my job to talk to donors and make sure that they were comfortable while giving blood, and helping them calm down if they were nervous about having the needle go in. Some people get queasy just at the sight of their own blood. I also had to help them walk to the snack station to make sure that they didn’t pass out and fall on the ground. I also donated blood myself, and it almost ended in me passing out because I did not remember to eat enough the morning of the blood drive, which was not fun. The second part of my community service was devoting time to the J.B. Ogle Animal Shelter over in Jeff. I filled out a waiver and whenever I came in on an open day, they had me do whatever needed to be done on that particular day. Usually it was walking dogs, in which I got to pet and play with many good boys. I got to let them off the leash and run in the gated yard, where their personalities got to shine and I was able to give them a whole bunch of treats; I even taught a few of them to sit on command. Another day, I spent about an hour with the cats, in which I got to socialize kittens and then chase their mother around the shelter. A kid had picked her up without realizing that there was a hole in the screen door, and she had launched right off of his head and through the hole in the upper part of the door.