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Volunteer minus the 'volunteer' |
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Alright, i guess i've thought about this for a while, but more recently especially. You see, I was "invited to be considered" (aka: applying, but they wont tell you that) for the National Honor Society (NHS).
So they gave us an application form and we had three weeks to fill it out. this form included generic info like name, adress, so on. but we also had to fill out all of the voluntary work we've done since entering high school.
now, i met the ten hour requirement easily, but i wanted to have a diverse application so during the three week grace period, i did some extra volunteering in different areas to make my resume look better. And, as i've thought so many times before, i began to think, how is it 'volunteering' if you're doing it to gain something?
i mean, techinically, wherever you're volunteering doesn't have to pay you or give you anything, but, let's face it, the only reason kids go out of their way to volunteer these days is to get volunteer hours for a scholarship. (ok, not EVERYONE, but you have to admit a majority) So, basically, we are just volunteering because we need to in order to gain something- free college.
what ever happened to the good ol' days when kids would volunteer just for the heck of it? when did it suddenly become an industry where you had to volunteer for a specific company in order to recieve hours, you have to have someone actually sign off on it just to make sure you were actually giving back to your community, and have to include a number with which a person could contact the person who signed to make sure you were giving back to your community?
when did the volunteering industry become such a selfishly lucrative, black market scandal?!
(it took me 45 seconds to come up with those adjectives)
volunteering is no longer volunteering. rather, we are being pressured to volunteer. quite literally, teenagers are 'volunteered to volunteer'. There needs to be a new word to explan just plain nice acts.
why isn't helping an old man across the street volunteering? oh yeah, because everyone's paranoid he's a pedifile. why isn't helping your neighbor move volunteering? oh right, it's not an official organization that can be counted as creditable.
look, i'm not bashing volunteering, but i call things like i see 'em. and i'm guilty of it, too. so the next time someone drops a stack of papers, or needs help carrying something heavy (make sure it's not in an empty parking lot, though. just because you're doing something nice doesn't mean you wont get kidnapped) why don't you volunteer to help? or better yet, don't 'volunteer' we have to leave that word behind because of the connotations it has picked up while being dragged through the mud. no, why don't we call it something that hasn't had its name tarnished or bashed or become an inside job. rather, lets call it:
Hospitality.
 Qua Quidam · Sat Mar 08, 2008 @ 01:43am · 0 Comments |
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