As students spend approximately 36 hours per week at school, they surround themselves with a campus that possesses the ability to nurture either a positive and creative spirit or an attitude of dread, dampening the motivation for academic success. A school’s grounds, the foundation of a student’s education, can either make or break its population’s motivation, thus presenting the importance of maintaining a well-kept environment.
Wednesday, November 5, NC’s Beta Club rallied together for a campus clean-up, in which they donned gloves and trash bags to maintain the beauty of one of Cobb County’s oldest buildings. After an hour of cleaning, participating students realized the sheer amount of trash lurking inside innumerable crevices on campus left unnoticed by the average passerby. Particularly after Halloween, the NC premises featured a litter of candy wrappers and sugary crumbs. While the sweet remnants of the spooky holiday leave memorable smiles on the faces of high schoolers, the plastic residue pollutes their school.
(Cassidy Lumpkin)
“I felt really productive [participating in the clean-up]. I felt like I was actually contributing to the school and the environment — there’s a lot of gross stuff. We saw a lot of plastics, like candy wrappers and plastic paper, but mostly gum wrappers. I think [keeping the campus clean] is really important because this is our school and we should take care of it to the best of our ability. We don’t want freshmen coming in and seeing garbage everywhere and being like, ‘Oh, so I can just throw my trash anywhere, they don’t care.’ It [cleaning up] was very easy to do, and I would recommend it because it’s really low effort. I feel like anyone could do this anywhere,” senior London Brown said.
The importance of cleaning the campus lies not only in protecting Mother Nature but in cultivating the minds of scholars who spend hours of their lives at the school. Due to a person’s surroundings creating a flood of sensory input, in turn altering stress levels, an individual’s environment shapes both their mindset and their mental health. A clean habitat promotes a clean headspace, in turn boosting productivity and motivation.
To protect a student’s welfare, one must first take a look at his or her surroundings. Those with environments stuffed with trash and mud-cladden floors will internalize the mess and become further stressed, caring less for their personal organization. On the other hand, campuses with clean flower beds and well-kempt hallways feel motivated and eager to participate in school with a sense of eagerness. Because of this ripple effect, the key to fostering a proud school spirit may lie in its maintenance.
“I truly believe that students behave differently in positive environments, meaning that when their environment is clean and positive and beautiful, they feel as though the community respects them and feel that they are worth it. So if a place is filled with graffiti and trash and doesn’t reflect the care that they are worthy of, students come to feel that that is very much all that the community feels they are worth. So I think it is worth our time and attention to spend a little bit of time now and then making sure that our community sees their value,” Beta Club sponsor Carolyn Galloway said.
Numerous students view school as a means to an end, meant only to propel them into college and the “real world.” In turn, they disregard the importance of maintenance and fail to recognize the impact of carelessness. A culture that demands society’s productivity can form mindsets around the idea that one’s self stands solely responsible for their success. Instead of caring for their body, minds and personal surroundings, individuals believe that if they can simply force themselves to focus, they can successfully trudge through their workloads. Unfortunately, this notion serves only to harm a person’s mental health, as humans unavoidably remain prone to external stimuli. While the effect may seem minute, the care put into an individual’s environment impacts the care they put into their work.
Due to a campus’s impact on its population, custodial staff provide an incredible, yet underrepresented, service to the school through their constant maintenance efforts. While these tidying titans execute their jobs beautifully, students should additionally care for their educational homes by remaining mindful about littering and taking conscious initiative by cleaning up after themselves and their peers.
The Chant sends a resounding thank you to NC’s lovely custodians, Greenhouse Gang, Beta Club and all other groups working to maintain NC’s lovely environment.
