Shabbir Husain BSOS 191 Sec- 0201 9/23/10 The Making of a CIVICUS Associate How did I become a member

of CIVICUS? I have no idea, but I can talk about how I was raised and what I have learned throughout my 18 years of life, which may have contributed to the decision of the higher authorities to make me a member of CIVICUS. The central themes of CIVICUS are citizenship, scholarship, community service learning, and community building in a diverse society, all of which does apply to some of my past experiences. Citizenship was very much engrained into mind when I was young because Columbia, Maryland, my hometown, was a really diverse place with people from many different backgrounds and so we were taught to be tolerant and appreciate diversity through the institutionalization of the Howard County Public School System. This was effective in making me a civil human being by the time I reached middle school. Another time I had an encounter of true citizenship was when I went with my mother to vote during the 2008 primaries. There was freezing rain all around our car on the way to my high school and the traffic went on for miles, I begged my mother to take me home, but she wouldnt listen. She, an Indian immigrant, explained to me that in order to truly appreciate the freedoms and rights I have in this country then I would have to fulfill civic duties such as voting. In the end she drove all the way to the high school in hail and rain just to vote, too bad for her that Hillary Clinton lost. So living with the most grade-obsessed parents in the world has taught me the value of scholarship. In the eighth grade I have allowed myself to completely procrastinate on

projects and assignments because I was much more concerned about other things like my social life for example. My grades drastically suffered and I ended up with Ds and Cs for subjects that Im normally good at like history and reading. So I was grounded for a month and my parents were actually sobbing because they were worried that I would never go to college or get a job and that I would have to live with them for the rest of their life. After I made up all of the missing assignments and caught up in school my averages in those classes were okay and I was still an AP/GT student when I later went to high school. From this experience Ive learned that as a student my priorities should always be my academics and that my social life would have to balance itself around that. In Howard County, community service hours that were required of us students in order to graduate was fulfilled for us in middle school. Middle school service was when picking up trash around the school for five minutes was magically turned into five hours by teachers who had too much to deal with to have another set of requirements thrown at them in order to make sure the children in their community graduate high school. The result, Ive felt like Ive learned nothing about community service and that I didnt get the real experience of helping out a community in need. Another experience Ive had with community service learning was when my Spanish teacher in high school made everyone do a community service project and then give an oral presentation about it in Spanish. Most of the groups just decided to fake the service project and give the oral presentation based mostly off of fabricated lies; however, my group was one of the few who actually did a service project, we volunteered at a soup kitchen, and we got full credit while a lot of other people received citations for academic dishonesty. The lesson from that experience is if you have to lie, dont do it in Spanish, and of course always have academic integrity. I

think that being involved in CIVICUS will help me get involved with more service organizations and that I would get that real experience of helping other people, just by watching over kids in after-care programs, serving food to the poor, or simply giving blood. Community building in a diverse society does apply to me because as Ive stated before Im from a diverse neighborhood so people in Columbia are generally accepting of other peoples differences. One time that I was truly reminded that I was different because of my race was when I went to elementary school in Ellicott City; it was shortly after September 11, so some kids used to tease me and call a suicide bomber or a terrorist. This depressed me slightly, but I soon got over it because I really didnt care about what some ignorant children say. It does bother me now though because I think about how racism or peoples views about ethnicity begin at childhood and they probably acquire their opini0ons from their parents who could also be like-minded. I think that in order for people to live in a society of tolerance and respect parents would have to teach these values to their children so they could grow up to be respectful people. My experiences in life have taught me what it means to be civil being who reveres tolerance and understanding. Ive learned from experience that in order to enjoy the rights and freedoms that I have I should do whatever is necessary to fulfill civic obligations like voting, jury duty, being involved in the community, etc. Basically I should be a citizen of where I live. I should also be proud of the fact that I am educated and that I should strive to be as knowledgeable as I could be. Finally, my experiences have taught me that helping others who are in need isnt being obnoxious, its being humane. These valuable lessons may have been why I have been selected to be a member of CIVICUS, I still dont know

yet.