Volunteering is a crucial part of our high school years. It helps us get the scholarships we want and gives us something to look impressive on college applications. We volunteer for a good grade in community service, or because it’s court-mandated. However, these are not really the reasons we should be doing community service.

The best way to volunteer is to do something that interests you. Find a cause that you think is important to help, or something that you like to do. For instance, I like working with children, so I volunteer at an elementary school. If you like what you’re doing then it doesn’t feel like work, it becomes something you want to do. Instead we should strive toward helping our communities and making the world a better place to live.

The reason that community service looks good on college applications is because it appears as though a person cares about their community and helping people. That person might care, but they may just be trying to help themselves. Students of our generation no longer help people without asking “what’s in it for me?”

There are the few who actually choose to volunteer out of the goodness of their hearts, but I feel like those people are becoming more and more outnumbered in our high school.

During high school we tend to get so wrapped up in ourselves that we forget that other people need care. We obsess over our own needs and forget that the reason we are helping people shouldn’t only be to help ourselves. Volunteering helps us to focus on helping the community instead of focusing on miniscule high school drama.

I understand the incentives we have to volunteer are appealing, but I don’t think that volunteering is worth as much when it’s just for something to put down on a college application. Helping someone or doing a project to benefit the community can make you feel like a better person. Helping a person should be enough.

It’s not a bad thing that we get credit for volunteering on our college applications, in class or other places, but we shouldn’t let volunteering lose its meaning. If you are only doing community service to help yourself, then maybe you should rethink your motives.