College applications, scholarship application, and profiles as students move onto the next level of their academic careers are mounting with each day that passes. Students are constantly being told that they must not only build their academic curriculum and hold steadfast to their GPAs but also garner as much outside of school involvement as possible. Students are asked about their community involvement. But why is community service so important? To many young and inexperienced students community service seems like wasted time that competes with their teen goals of having fun and making it through high school. As students of an early college one of the questions that needs to be answered is what exactly is community service and how does it help me?
Community service hours are unpaid activities or time given freely of one’s own will and not because the member is required to do so. Community service is designed to improve the quality of life for a community residents or schools. There are many ways why you should be helping out your community. For example the benefits it has are psychological, social, and cognitive. Participating in community service not only makes a difference to the organization but also to the people being served. According to Florida National University having community hours helps in many ways for instance psychological benefits by volunteering it increases overall life satisfaction and helps you feel good about yourself because you are helping others. It can also help decrease stress and depression. According to our student Yaneth Verdin she implies that helping out in the community helps her feel good about herself and that she has done something good in life “ I love to do community hours because i see people with smiles in their faces i also see dogs happy to be played with, its heart warming looking at the community.”
Many other reasons exists why you should volunteer for example it has some social benefits like it engages students with the community creating special bonds with the population being served and increases social awareness and responsibility. Also it has some cognitive benefits because while volunteering helps students enhance their personal knowledge, grow from new exercise and develop better interpersonal communication skills. Many students don’t realize helping the community or getting to know the things that is in their community can help find what they actually want to study for. Having hours in some of the volunteering places help a lot in your resume. For example if your major is going for criminal justice you can do time in the juvenile detention center and that would look so perfect in the resume and would give you an advantage.