Community service should be required for high school students to graduate. Teaching students responsibility, respectfulness, and the lessons of life are some of the many benefits to community service. Students need to learn the importance of a community as a whole and experience the real world before they leave high school because making a difference in your community can help students realize how much assistance your community needed in the first place. Teenagers need to realize that knowledge does not only stem from book sense, it also includes common sense and how society works. Many individuals may understand that there are people around the world that are not as privileged as most, but being able to help those in need can be truly eye-opening to students who are ignorant of how society works. Few people may think that students already have too much on their plate without adding more responsibilities, but I feel that community service can put the real world into a different outlook for teenagers. Community service can help students learn to truly appreciate the things that they have in life and how they can help their community become a better place. One of the major reasons that teenagers feel irritated with a school is because they feel as if high school is not teaching you how to be a responsible adult. However, required community service hours can change this perspective. A student who believes that reading a book is pointless can help out the community by reading to children and helping them read as well. Working within your community can take what many students think is pointless learning and change it into a real-life skill. Many individual students are not as invested in learning as others. Students can learn from the mistakes of the others that have messed up along the way when they visit homeless shelters that have recovering alcoholics and drug addicts. Students who have debated dropping out of high school can talk to people at local food banks that regret dropping out as they are now struggling to put food on the table for their families because they do not have the required education. Teenagers can learn how important their future is from visiting and assisting local food banks and homeless shelters.