Simply put, the answer can be yes and no. It can vary from person to person, but when taking the majority into account, it can seem as if people are driven by making good impressions on their college applications.
The amount of community service necessary to seem appealing to “good” colleges is on the rise. Not only are students expected to maintain a good GPA and be committed to several clubs at once, but also to accumulate an astonishing number of service hours.
One can’t blame another for having selfish intentions; it is human nature after all to look after oneself. This is not to say there aren’t people who genuinely care for their neighborhood, but how does an ordinary teenager find helping out the community relevant enough to spend more than 1000 hours managing it?
What community service is meant for is no longer the main reason people spend their time working on it. Since it became beneficial to students seeking to stand out more on their resume and applications to colleges, community service has become more important than before, just for a different reason.
Would people really go through the trouble of accumulating community service hours instead of spending their precious time doing truly productive things? Would it be biased to read from a high schooler’s point of view and call it unfair? Maybe.
Time management will certainly become a survival skill if we want to meet all criteria and pass as a “well-rounded” student.
It is great that there is now a greater motivation behind helping out the community (or making it seem as if people are helping it).
That way colleges determine whether a student is well-rounded or not. Although, the difference between well-rounded and robotic should be a piece of cake to understand; the distance between the two have been brought closer than ever before.
Generations before us didn’t have to worry about this as much. But now they’re the ones deciding who gets accepted into state colleges and Ivy leagues.
Time management is a useful skill, but to what point does it become an inhibitor? Maybe never. Although, to play devil’s advocate and switch into a conformist’s stance, too much or too little of anything can be unhealthy. A balance between the extremes can be a better approach to finding the right time for community service.
