Earlier this month, we all gathered in homeroom to receive our report cards, collect too many hand outs our parents will never see and be given a sheet of paper that was supposed to answer all questions and present us with all necessary information on the Charger Challenge, Northwood’s new graduation project.
     As seen on page four of The Omniscient, this year’s project is much different than the projects previous seniors have had to do. And although we are glad that we are no longer forced to research a topic we have no interest in or bother community members for mentor time, we still feel that this new project is far less than perfect.
     For this project, students have to participate in 20 hours of community service per year, something that we think will be very beneficial to us when applying to colleges. Although we find the requirement of community service to be valuable, we can also recognize that forcing students to participate in community service, who may not want to, isn’t as helpful to them as the administration is implying it will be. Forced service does not have the same effect as volunteered service, and we are sure that some students will find ways to cheat the system.
     We also feel that the components of this project are not as realistic or easy as they seem. For one, the sophomore class has to do a job shadow and answer questions about the diversity at the work place. Diversity is not the most important feature of a work place and having them focus on that aspect while doing a job shadowing is basically throwing away a learning opportunity.
     The most important problem with this project though, is that we feel that diversity is not the best topic that this project can be focused on. As students in this community we have already been exposed to diversity and have already learned about it through other classes and our own experiences. The best way to teach diversity is to be around it, to be involved in it, and to learn through exposure. Northwood is a diverse school, so to focus on a topic that we don’t have a problem with in this community seems like a waste of time.
     Overall though, we feel it is safe to say that none of us really want to participate in a graduation project at all. Being forced to do something extra on top of all the homework, clubs, activities, sports, AP classes, SAT testing, college applications and football games is a pain. It’s not fair that students can pass all of their courses and still not receive a diploma because they didn’t write this extra paper. We feel that the project is a waste of time for staff, who have to grade these projects, and the students, who can be doing something better with their time.
     Now that this project has been put in place though, we’re sure that it’s not going to be changed for this year. For that reason we want to stress the importance of keeping the project as it is for years to come. If the project is really going to benefit this year’s freshmen, the school needs to refrain from changing it so that it can really be a culminating learning experience. Constant changes make students notice inconsistency and that inconsistency says to us as a student body, that this project is unimportant and makes us question why we’re doing it at all.