A Lesson from the Doctor: Why We Volunteer

The Doctor from Doctor Who taught me that humans are hopeful. That's what we are. We endure economic crises, wars, pandemics, but we emerge victorious. And if we don't emerge victorious, we pull ourselves together and clean up the debris, and force ourselves to turn around and pick up right where we left off.

Of course, when I say "we", I automatically exclude myself and most of the people I know.

My friends and I, as teenagers of the 21st century in East Coast suburbs, know little of hardship. We have arguments and drama and uprooting and occasionally, deaths of loved ones. But we do not know what it's like to fight for our lives, fight oppression and disease.

It makes us feel useless. It certainly makes me feel useless. The fact that I have the luxury to sit here and complain about feeling useless in front of my fancy computer next to my fancy camera and all my fancy test prep material makes me feel no more than useless and selfish. So I volunteer. Where I volunteer doesn't matter. It's at charity runs, at local parks, at educational events. It's not ending world hunger, but it's something.

Community service hours are important to high schoolers. Logging them displays "character," that we go out and give our time and (labor) services. I myself have already volunteered over 50 hours this year alone. While it may not seem like much from an adult working perspective, keep in mind that us students also have school and homework and extracurriculars.

But all of that is beside the point.

We volunteer because it gives our coordinators hope in the coming generation. it tells them that we are not all pigs and slobs, lazy bums who do nothing but text and drive, deface buildings, and waste money.

We volunteer because it gives our receivers hope. Often, teens spend weekends at food banks or shelters. And once in a while, we leave an impact.

But we also volunteer because we are selfish. We volunteer because it gives us, as teenagers, hope in ourselves and the world around us. Hours are good for college applications. It gives us hope to our dream schools and jobs. Running around following orders is, well, exercise. It gives us hope that we stay fit, though we rarely think about this one. Most of all, though, volunteering reassures us that we are not useless. That while we have been blessed with the world in our hands, we can also make a change in that same world. That by getting up and getting involved, we will one day involve ourselves in the discovery of the cure to cancer, to AIDS, to global peace.

Need Help With Math?

If you're reading this blog and you happen to be a high schooler in Precalculus or lower, or maybe even Calculus, I'm not sure, visit my friend Kyle's forum here! He is an excellent student currently in Georgia's Accelerated Math 3, which covers mathematics up to introductory statistics, trigonometry, and some physics, and is considered an equivalent of the national math courses Precalculus and Trigonometry.

Don't be shy!

School Has Begun...

High school is brutal. The teachers are brutal, the hallways are brutal (especially stairwell 3 in the 300 wing between first and second period at Green Hope), but most of all, the workload is brutal. I mean, sure, if you aren't an academically oriented person, your homework is going to be significantly less. But here I am, sitting in from of my computer with 7 textbooks for 5 classes on my left, two open notebooks between my keyboard and the monitor, and a mad mental search going for my calculator.

Various experts give various times for how much sleep we really need, but most of the numbers fall in a range of 8 to 10 hours. Last year, this was occasionally achievable; school started at 8:00, so when I went to bed at 11 or 12, I'd get around 8 hours of sleep. This year, my high school has conformed with other schools in our area by starting school 35 minutes earlier. For me, this means adjusting from getting up between 7:15 and 7:35, to sleeping in all summer, to waking at 6:00, hitting snooze, and waking again at 6:15 in order to be on time to class.

No one high schooler I know sleeps more than 8 hours a night. Many of my friends are like me: countless AP's, countless extracurricular activities. Our lives move so quickly that we practically have our personal contrails. Lunchtime consists of a few minutes of eating, then studying, going to tutorial sessions (Green Hope has something called a smart lunch), or attending/organizing/preparing club meetings.

Sometimes, the reality of how much you're taking on doesn't hit you immediately. My friends and I, we were nonchalant and cool with having such an intense workload, even excited. Now three weeks into school, we're all getting bags under our eyes and complaining ceaselessly about our lack of lives and lack of sleep, of not perfect grades, of dissatisfaction. Last weekend, I was filling out a form for a commitment at my local library. One of the requests was to list your extracurricular activities and commitments. I wrote mine down, came back two minutes later with more, and did so again. It's bad when you can't keep track, isn't it?

Yes, yes it is. High school is brutal.