Service Learning Project

December 1st, 2007

During the first semester of school, I participated in the required Service Learning Project.  I was instructed to complete 20 hours of community service, observe in a court room for 2 hours, research a county, observe a city council meeting, and of course write this rant essay.  Although my role may have been very small, it contributed to the overall project.  Allow me to explain.  Since 500 some odd seniors are required to do 20 hours of community service in order to graduate, the local communities received (or will receive) roughly 10,000 hours of free service from this high school alone.  Which if you think about it is probably the biggest loophole exploit of our country’s child labor laws in history (the second being shipping the little runts overseas).

I can’t say that I view the community too terribly different after this project.  Maybe that’s just because the work I did after school wasn’t too terribly different than the work I did during school.  But I suppose that all depends on what you choose to do for your community service in the first place.  In retrospect I probably should have picked something else.  However, I can say that I learned quite a bit about our “Due Process”.  After spending what seemed like hours in court, I came to the conclusion that the fear of having to go to court was enough to make me never do anything unlawful ever again; and I probably won’t be suing anyone in the near future either.  Maybe it was just the case I observed, but between not being able to understand what the prosecutor was saying, and understanding enough to know they’ve been going around in circles for the past two hours was enough to make me puke.

It wasn’t all bad, though. Some parts did create some valuable experiences.  I experienced how horrible it can be to have a boss, and that a deadline is much more deadly when the threat “you won’t graduate” is hanging over your head.  It was useful to experience what a court case is like (although as stated I would prefer not to have that experience again) and what it feels like to research a county (the second most boring thing you’ll ever do next to filing your taxes).

This project has taught me some more about American citizenship, and what it means to be an American.  And if I didn’t actually like this country so much I’d rant about that too.  But in all seriousness, being an American and a good American citizen is important.  I think that all people of this country should strive to be a good citizen, whatever that means to them.  For some it’s pointing out the flaws in our government, for others it’s creating ungodly Internet shock websites, and for a few people it’s actually wanting to do community service.  For me, being a good citizen means to not cause trouble, help others when you can, get your work done, and of course avoid court rooms at all costs.

When a project asks “What would you do differently next time?” it means they expected you either wouldn’t like the project or expected you to screw up somehow so that you would need to do it all over again.  Although I didn’t screw up, I can definitely say I didn’t enjoy this project.  I suppose if I was forced to do it again (and even then I would give my left nut not to), I would find a better place to get my hours in so I wouldn’t be so angry and create this rant of an accumulating essay.

If people are inclined to do community service than by all means go right ahead, I’m not stopping you.  However the point of community service is that it is something you voluntarily do for whatever reason you may have: The most common being karma, religion, boredom, or the fact that you are just “a good person”.  Which I think is a load of bullocks because the only “good people” are those who can’t accomplish anything bad without being caught.  Since I didn’t particularly enjoy the service I did (which was dealing with a remedial class of students working on old as hell computers), I wouldn’t say I recommend doing community service to anyone.  That’s not to say it is always so crappy; I’m sure there are things you could do that only require you to break one or two bones in your body instead of all of them; but I think a society that requires extra work for the community that should have been payed for by our hard earned taxes epically fails.

And I’m not even going to answer the last question about our school’s “Optimum Learning Expectations” because I’ll be spending my time finding the drunk hippie that thought of them in the first place and beating them senseless for ever even considering creating such a thing.