<p>This summer I'm on a volunteer crew that requires you to live at the work site for a month. How does this work when counting your volunteer hours? </p>
<p>My parents said I should just calculate it as 24 hours a day times the thirty days I'm there. Their rationale is that if I wasn't volunteering I would be at home working for money - they think it should count since I'm still volunteering my time to be away from home.</p>
<p>I kind of see where they're coming from but it seems dishonest to include time that I spend sleeping and eating! When I'm reporting volunteer hours on a college application will they think it's dishonest for me to report the time I'm not working as volunteer hours? Will they even know the difference?</p>
<p>To give you an idea about how big the difference would be I estimated that our crew spends about nine and a half hours a day strictly working. For thirty days this would be around 285 service hours. Versus if I counted the whole day it would be a whopping 720 hours! That's a BIG difference in the number of volunteer hours. So what's your input? How should I calculate the number of hours? Should I include the hours of 'volunteering my time' or strictly the hour I spend working?</p>