Poster Project? More like Disaster Project.

So far today I have done nothing except for work on this poster project. The whole time this project has been assigned I thought for sure that it would be easy to create a nice picture and a nice poster and get an easy A on this project. However, after working on this picture all weekend so far I have come to the conclusion that I am going to get an F on this assignment simply because I do not know how to use any picture editing program to save my life. Every time I use a tool it does something different that I do not want it to do. The same tools never do the same thing, and it seems that each time I go to use a tool it wants to perform a different function than what it did last time I used it. I have added in and taken out so many pictures and I now have no clue what I can even do to make this any better. What I have so far is very cheesy and seems simple to make, but I cannot make it any more complex because I simply do not know how to use the editing tool to make it any better. The Aviary program likes to perform different functions every time and it loves to mess up my layers and add in and take out random things from my layers. I would love to make this poster look way cooler and way more complex/diverse, but I simply cannot do that because my skill with this tool is unbelievable low and horrible. I have watched all sorts of videos and tutorials  but the tools never do what they do in the tutorials and my project just ends up getting messed up and looking worse than before. This project could be a very cool one, but I personally hate it because I do not like the idea of me being graded on my skills of using a software that I have 1) never used before and 2) have no skill with.

Community Service and what it means

I personally think that community service has the power to be a great and wonderful tool. I have a longstanding history with community service so I have seen the positive effects that community service can bring about. Throughout my life I have had to get so many hours of community service every year starting in sixth grade when we sort of officially became old enough to do things by ourselves. I had to get hours in sixth, seventh, and eighth grades because I could not pass CCD and become confirmed without these hours. And then, throughout high school, I proceeded to need a minimum of ten hours freshman and sophomore years and twenty-five hours junior and senior years in order to advance to the next grade and to graduate. These minimum were strictly imposed on us and we honestly could not graduate without the required hours. There are numerous true story examples of kids who did not complete their hours and then ended up not graduating. Therefore, that is my background with service.

Because of my longstanding history with service, I feel that I am well educated with it in order to speak this way about it. I personally think that service as great, as I stated earlier. However, I do not think that service is fulfilling its true purpose if it is something that is mandated by someone else. Volunteering is exactly just that, volunteering. If we are required to complete so many hours then that is not necessarily volunteering, now is it? To me, it becomes just another homework assignment that people hate doing. Once this service becomes mandatory, it loses all the characteristics that are supposed to come with it. People do not put forth the amount of effort that an actual volunteer would, and that, in turn, may end up actually hurting the company. Thus, I think it can be a great thing, but I do not think that community service hours should never be imposed upon someone unless court mandated, and they should definitely never be needed to pass a class.