I am writing this journal article to discuss the effects being a college student can have on one’s civic engagement as well as how it has personally affected me. I will dive into both the benefits as well as the drawbacks and will be speaking from my own personal experiences.
Prior to being a college student I would have consider myself very engaged civically in my own community in Connecticut. As a highschool student I was constantly doing fundraisers, attending town events and always voting during local elections. I felt very connected to my community as I knew what was going on through our towns social media pages and threw word of mouth within my community.
Attending college definitely changed my civic engagement within my hometown. I definitely do not feel as strong of a connection as I did when I lived there and I obviously can’t attend fundraisers and events like I used to due to being so far away. I defiantly feel that in order to be considered civically engaged in a community you have to be living in that community.
That isn’t to say that I am totally disconnected from my community. Even Though I am far away I still am able to vote for local elections via mail in ballots and I am still able to find out what is going on in town through social media pages and the towns website.
It is however much more difficult to be as engaged as I once was. I can definitely see how one could easily completely disconnect from their community because it’s extremely difficult to feel like you’re a part of a community which is so distant.
Being so far away does make it harder to be constantly civically engaged in my hometown however, I have definitely become much more civically engaged in other ways being a college student. For instance, I feel that I am now a part of the Wheaton Community, as well as the Norton community. This semester I was an inter at the public library and I learned a lot about the Norton community and feel as though I am now apart of it. Also being a college student has taught me a lot about what being civically engaged is due to taking classes such as journalism 2.0. The knowledge that I have learned form college I am able to take home and apply what I have learned to my civic engagement practices.
Though college has made it harder to be constantly civically engaged in my hometown, it has taught me what it really means to be civically engaged as well as its importance. Going home for break I will definitely apply what I have learned as well as teach others what they can do to be even more civically engaged in the community.