Community is defined as a group of individuals who have a sense of connection with one another and share a common characteristic. Individuals within a community receive support from the community, and give support in return. It is a general rule that those within a community strive to better the community as a whole. A community that does not strive to be better is stagnant, and will fade over time.

At the moment, my role as a student is to achieve my career goals; it is expected of me to improve my knowledge of the world while at Baruch and to move on to obtain a successful and satisfying job. However, as a Baruch Scholar in the Honors Program, my role is not only to learn and become an independent individual, but to become a better human being as well.

I believe that in a community, the community provides support for the individual, while the individual uses that support to make the community better. The community can begin to plant trees, but it is ultimately up to the individual to keep watering those trees and ensure its growth. The community can build a library and provide its books, but it is up to the individual to request more and better books. The community can provide solutions, but it is up to the individual to ask the questions. The role of the individual is to recognize a problem, and help the community find and carry out a solution; that is the role I believe my role as a Baruch Scholar is.

Service is defined as the action of helping someone else. The Honors Program promotes a culture of service that does not service the individual, but the community around them. By engaging students in community service, the Honors Program helps students recognize a problem not just because it’s on the news channels or because some expert said so, but also because they can see the problem and even experience the problem. Through this recognition, students can help continue to carry out the solution to those problems or even provide an entirely new solution. In this process, students become part of the community. By giving back to the community, students help improve the community as a whole. In return, the community helps the students to become better versions of themselves through human interactions; that way, we don’t grow to become robots whose only concern is a job. Communities provide support, hope, and a network of social interactions that define humans as human. Through this process, students become more than just better versions of themselves, but better human beings as well.