Good morning from the East Coast everyone. Okay, so it's actually like 1:19pm here and I woke up at 11 to eat a few jolly ranchers but I'm just now beginning to realize that I'm not still asleep.
I've been watching Spongebob Squarepants for the majority of my morning. How sweet it is.
For some reason, I can't seem to find anything productive to do for this summer. I mean, I do a couple dance classes a week but that's not likely to do me much good. I tried looking for some classes at a community college to take but, as always, I was too late. I looked for Volunteer work and contacted some animal shelters but only one responded and they sent me an application form to adopt a pet. I responded saying:
I was actually hoping I could volunteer and help out around the shelter?
and they responded with:
Oh, okay. I'll search around the office and we'll see what we can do.
3 weeks has gone by.
In a way, I feel it's sort of hypocritical to advertise on websites that they "need volunteers" and then when you sign up, they decide to take their precious time responding (if they respond at all), as if they're helping us.
And sure, there are other places that I could volunteer, but I am a strong believer in volunteering at places that you truly have a passion for. In my School (we'll just call it The School),volunteer is basically just doing some babysitting for your aunt or mom to get the required "x" amount of hours. The School doesn't really enforce this rule. Sure, they won't allow you to graduate if you don't complete the required "x" amount of hours, but I really wonder what the point of this 'volunteer requirement' is. You would think that they want their students to gain experience from this volunteer work and help people less fortunate than them. This seems to be what The School advertises to the prospective students' parents. However, I beg to differ. You can easily complete these hours by participating in a school activity (the name of this activity will remain unidentified) that essentially calls The School alumni and badgers them for money. If you participate in it for one week straight, you get "x"+ hours. My perspective on this is:
A) After paying almost [enter large sum here] to attend the school, it should really be the alum's decision to donate or not (without being biannually called and hounded to donate whatever little money they have left in this severely crippled economy).
B) HOW can this be considered volunteer work? Who are you helping? A school that already charges a ridiculous amount of money to attend and then, once attending, forces you to pay for fundraisers (which is basically The School administration saying, "sell this box of chocolates or be ready to get 'x' amount of money and a late fee added to your tuition" - this is a topic for another day)? Or overpriced lunch food (that does not work on your behalf if you have a slow metabolism)? A school that forces you to buy textbooks and workbooks that most of the teachers don't even use?
Please. That's not volunteer work, that's bribing you for free labor.
Volunteer work should be about helping those less fortunate or helping someone who is trying to fulfill that goal. Not about getting more money for people who already have too much (in my case).
Anyone up for a discussion about this...?
