In the sense that while it is better than nothing, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Unlike Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, UFV’s Co-Curricular Record Credit (CCR) program is an attempt to enhance students’ resumes and academic portfolios by giving credit for extracurricular activities at UFV. The validation process passed over the break, and like many times before, during my time here at UFV I found myself expecting to do a lot of work, getting frustrated, and instead venting in a group chat and procrastinating until the deadline had passed.
For your benefit, I’ll recap the highlights of my frustrations with the program, as I see it (fair warning that because I’m dumb I could be totally wrong about all of these) as best I can. There are four major issues I see with it.
First, hours are only logged semesterly and require short essays (that I wouldn’t expect to be more than regurgitated feel-good platitudes if I ever got around to actually writing it) on how the volunteer hours helped you, which is already one hurdle too high and too many considering the work I’d have done itself and the benefit I expect to get from having it approved by the CCR program. Furthermore, they cannot retroactively authorize or confirm volunteer activity I’ve been doing for the last four years. Considering the constant turnover in student staff, and degree of proper file management or speedy responses expected from its officers, it’s hard enough to have to deal with that bureaucracy even once, let alone every semester. I feel like there should be more coordination between the Student Union Society (SUS) and the relevant UFV departments in logging these hours into a shared system as we go so the onus isn’t on the students and they can focus on the work they are doing, both in class and out. Thirdly, whatever this “credit” means or is worth is in my view diluted when they count everything from setting up chairs (not that it’s not important) to organizing events and fundraisers as pretty much the same thing when it comes to hours. If this program is going to work at all, I would hope it would be more stringent, if only to encourage people to give more than the bare minimum. Lastly, with everything I’ve laid out in mind, I fail to see what the benefit is (compared to the work I’d have to do to receive the credit) over just putting the projects I’m proud of or skills I’ve learned on my resume like any other activity?
What is the big gap between the slip of paper or formal accreditation, and me stating the work on my resume and using my own words to explain what skills I developed, what use I found for them, and how it was a meaningful experience that will help me in that future? Whatever that gap is, I think we should really start considering whether it is worth the resources (money and time) that go towards keeping this program afloat. Maybe we should play to our strengths instead of developing infrastructures for engagement that won’t be used until people start living here at campus or our average age drops. We can talk about that last part a little more another time, for now I’m on the hunt for some craft brews.
