Burlington High School
Burlington, Kansas
Teacher: Devra Parker
Community in the World
By Nikki Webb
12th grade
Community is a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage. How do I feel about community? The community that I am growing up in is a really good one because they have so many different opportunities for the citizens. They help out with other people’s problems and try to work together to make town activities come together and work. I feel that I am lucky to live in such a community.
I connect with the world community by trying to make things better with other people. Sometimes, they sit there and say rude comments to each other and have so much hostility towards one another; it’s pathetic. The world would be a better place if everyone could get along. I would like to see more diversity, sexual preference, and more females among males. There is nothing wrong with that. We are all the same; not one person is any different. In the national community, I would think that if our society helped out a little more with other countries, we would be more loved. I feel community when others help feed children if they are starving, kind of like what Angelina Jolie does. She is a perfect role model for our national community. She’s adopted foreign children from other countries, nurses them back to health, and raises them. I look up to her because she puts forth that effort to make a change.
My local community works together to do what it takes to keep this town alive. Like I have said, they are great. They decorate the streets on holidays and work together to get a county fair for the kids and 4-H participants. The city council works truly hard to make things like that exciting for the families. My community gives me so much opportunity to do activities that could affect my future; I just don’t take advantage of them. I really should though because it can help me with other scholarships. My nuclear community is different because it has helped me the most [to] grow into who I am today. I wouldn’t be the person I am today if my mom didn’t raise me the correct way and keep me out of all the bad things out in the real world. She’s protected me a lot throughout the years and I thank her for that. Who knows where I would even be today if she had not been there every step of the way. My extended family has helped my mom through tough times and such. They are good people and I am grateful to have them.
Another way I feel community is when my grandma taught me to read, cook, bake, and all kinds of things. I am very happy to have her in my life.
I have a lot of friends here in my community; some close and some that I only talk to at school. I usually talk to people at school because I don’t ever see them during the weekends. I call these people acquaintances. I feel community when I am around my close friends because we’ve been through a lot. I only have a select few close friends that I talk to on the weekends. Within those friends, I have other friends from other towns, and we do a lot of the same activities and even get into trouble together. It’s really fun sometimes. We also learn from each other, though, and we don’t do things that the other gets into trouble for; it just wouldn’t make any sense. For example, if my best friend said something rude to an adult, other people start talking about her. I wouldn’t do that because I wouldn’t want people to talk about me like that. Other than that, I tell all my problems to them and listen to the advice they have to give me. The same goes for them. We cry together during hard times and work through everything from guys to parents. In my opinion, that is how it should be all the time because I like to be helped and like to help others out.
Community is good for my future because I know how to be polite, help out, and make things work with other people. I have become a great person and that could be useful in the future because I can get a good job being outgoing and optimistic. People like it when others smile at them and say hello. You just have to be assertive and at least act like you like people to get somewhere in life.