During their high school career, students are required to obtain at least 40 service hours to graduate. As the school year comes to an end, students start to stress out about service hours. Some worry that they don’t have all 40 and some may worry they won’t turn them in on time. 

Many students struggle to obtain all 40 hours, because they don’t know where to go to volunteer. What many students don’t realize is that you can get your hours in many ways. There are animal shelters, soup kitchens, food shelters, churches, beach clean ups, tutoring, babysitting, hospitals, retirement homes, helping coach youth sports, charity races, bake sales and even helping set up for school events. There are so many ways you can obtain all your hours. 

Once you find a place to volunteer, it tends to be difficult to submit the hours online. Many students aren’t familiar with Thrively, which is where you submit your hours. It may be difficult to submit hours, which can cause students to procrastinate. It also tends to get frustrating when you can’t remember how to submit hours or even if you don’t know how to submit them and you have to ask for help. You can’t depend on friends or classmates or even teachers to help you all the time, especially if they’re in the same boat as you.  

Some students may find it difficult to obtain hours during school weeks or school time. Students are always jam-packed with homework even on the weekends which makes it hard to find time for service hours. Although summer, spring, winter and fall breaks are times to relax and forget about school, that may be the best time to take care of your service hours. During the winter and fall many places look for help to package and hand out food to people, so that is one way to help the community and get your hours done. 

Overall, 40 service hours is not too much  to complete and with a little bit of courage and help from those around you, you may be able to knock them out in a breeze. Thrively may be a little complicated but after a while it will get easier to navigate and submitting hours will be a breeze!