The Christian Community Service Hours program was instituted I believe to meet the criteria of the sponsor organization for our school, though I have to double-check. Basically, you need to clock 80 hours of community service by beginning of the second semester of your Senior year, at 20 hours per year. You don't do that, you don't graduate. Plain and simple. Even if you've got more than enough units (I'll be fifteen units over the minimum requirement come the end of my Senior year), you don't do your CCS requirement, you can't leave. So, alright, you've made it a chore alongside the course load; good going, administration. If that wasn't enough, they added an extra caveat to the program: You don't complete the previous year's hours by the beginning of the next year, you can't participate in co-curricular activities. Clubs? No. Sports? Nuh-uh. Dances? Not a prayer. The only way you can get yourself off the ban list is to turn in said hours. Sure, those things are all privileges that the administration can freely take away, and not completing a part of your graduation requirement is an excuse for them to do so. But a system that relies on negative reinforcement to ensure people follow it is, in my opinion, not the best idea. So, I propose a new idea:
As I stated a few days ago, we need to take 3 semester-long theology classes in our upper-division years. As I also stated, you can't get through that without having two of the most disliked teachers in the whole school. So, instead of taking those classes, you can substitute any upper-division theology class with community service. You just complete hours equal to the number of hours you would spend in the class by the end of the semester and you're done. You get your units for the pass/fail course, you complete a requirement, you do good for the community, and you get avoid homicidal impulses altogether. Everyone wins. And you can do this for as many or as few of the 3 classes as you would like.
Now, I haven't done the math on this, but I'm fairly certain that you'd be completing more than 20 hours in half the time. Still, it's a class you don't have to study for, so that opens your schedule a bit. Not to mention I could get 30 hours in a little under a month if I really felt like it. Problem is, I don't. My idea, however off-base and unfeasible it may or may not turn out to be, at least offers an incentive for doing community service: you can avoid a teacher you don't like.
I know you're tired of hearing me bitch for almost a week straight, so I'll shift gears a bit now.
I'm not particularly social. I don't find solitude a bad thing. However, when I'm pretty much a recluse through circumstance, getting out of the house and away from my family and having a good time is a necessity every once in a while. That's why I'm not really against going to school dances. I don't go to listen to the DJ blast the same songs that I hate over and over. I don't go to watch people I don't know get their freak on while I sip punch casually in a corner. I go to just hang out with friends in an atmosphere that has no problems with cutting loose. I go to have a good time without my parents monitoring everything I say and do and who I'm with. Even if it means I need to watch some of the most clichéd parts of high school relationships everywhere I look.
My sister will be out watching The Hunger Games tonight, and my parents will probably start keeping to themselves sometime after 8 in the evening.
So, tonight I'm going to kick back with a 2-liter of cola (Pepsi this time), some Fallout 3, some Robotech, and 30 hours' worth of music. That's company enough for me. Because, after all, when you've got your music,
"There is magic at your fingers
For the Spirit ever lingers,
Undemanding contact in your happy solitude."
If music is the new crack, then I'm going to need some serious rehab.
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