Soup kitchens, toy drives and nonprofit organizations all have one thing in common: they can help you get into college. These kinds of nonprofit activities provide students with the opportunity to receive volunteer community service hours; however, students have become so obsessed with doing only what is necessary to fulfill their graduation requirements that they completely miss the point, which is to help out the community.

The average student attends school 180 days out of the year for seven hours a day. In addition to those 1,260 hours, they also put in time for studying, participating in extracurricular activities and planning out how to get into college. All of this time is spent centered on ourselves rather than focusing on the greater good of the community.

All students in Florida high schools are required to have at least 20 hours of community service before they graduate. It’s embarrassing that the school district thinks that high school students are only capable of completing the bare minimum of 20 hours. But what’s even more embarrassing is when a student can’t even meet that low standard or when students only do the work because they have to.

The concept of mandatory community service hours was introduced only a few years ago. Although the original goal of it was a good one, students totally overlook the purpose. The necessary 20 hours have become more of an obstacle rather than an opportunity to help those in need. Instead of starting the work with the objective of helping others, students want to get it done and over with.

The required hours should be bumped up to at least 40, or a rule should be made that a student must turn in 20 hours per year while at Dreyfoos. This would increase the amount of time students spend helping the community and give students a better feel of the atmosphere for volunteer work.

Community service is there for a reason. It brings a community together by helping those in need. The fact that it has become a graduation requirement is not a punishment; it is supposed to spark a love of helping inside a student. The original purpose of getting young, impressionable students to work for the greater good as a community is an honorable one, but the thought behind it has become twisted so that service hours have become like Pokémon. Gotta catch ‘em all.