4 easy ways to make the world a better place

Why are we in college? If you study medicine, you probably want to help people get healthy again. If you study  to become a teacher, you either want to do as good a job as your favourite teachers, or you want to do better than the horrible teachers from your school. If you study to become a social worker, you want to give families and their members a better life. However, you don't need to be a doctor, teacher, or even Nobel Prize winner to contribute to a better world. Here are four simple things you can do to make others' lives better and you don't need a degree for that! 

1. Smile! Share your happiness with the world and spread it. I can become very happy when someone smiles at me, so someone else might get happy if you smile at them :) 
2. Turn off your gadgets, or at least leave them in your bag when you're in public. People today often have some sort of gadgets in their hand while in public: smart phone, mp3-player, and on, and on. They have earphones over or in their ears or they constantly look at a small screen. If you would just leave your gadgets in your bag, you would have the opportunity to talk with that old man who sits next to you in the bus or train! Old (but also young) people usually have more interesting stories than you expect from them and conversing with other people allows you to share your story with others, but it also lets others share their story with you. These stories may help you put things into perspective, inspire you to do something new, and thereby guide you in making the world a little bit better.
3. Do volunteer work. Most volunteer work does not cost too much time (usually about one morning / afternoon weekly at most), or you can help with special events when a lot of work must be done. For volunteering, you also do not need special qualifications or degrees, and sometimes - if your work is related to your study - you might get some credits for it! But most important, of course, is that you contribute to a better world.
4. Be nice and polite. This might seem like a no-brainer, but if you are nice and polite, you are likely to receive niceness and politeness from others, and if everyone is nice and polite to each other, the world will be a better place. 

So, as you can see, you don't need to be a Nobel Prize winner or have a college degree. Everyone can contribute to a better world, and by living in a better world, it is likely that you feel better, too. Besides, contributing to something and feeling useful can result in feeling content, which facilitates the aforementioned advices to improve the world, so it's just a positive vicious circle that you start! 

What do you think? Is it important to improve the world on a small scale as suggested above? How do you try to make the world a better place?