Community Service

Back at SAU after a weekend at home.  I basically spent time with my parents, read forty pages of the history of psychology, messed around on facebook, ate lots of food, and went to church.  Not necessarily in that order.

After getting home, I lounged around the house, half-heartedly correcting quizzes for my TA position and pretending to read.  I also looked into a few options for Rachel’s life after Spring Arbor University.  This motivation was extracted from me by a combination of my father and Michael Eatman’s influences.

When I visited the Office of Intercultural Relations Thursday, Eatman gave me a form for the “Michigan Service Scholars Program,” a program through Americorps that awards students who commit to three hundred hours of community service over a school year, and will receive $1000 for their efforts.

While at Panera Bread for lunch on Saturday, conversation with my mom and dad turned to school, and how my apathy is probably a heavy case of “senioritis.”  Because intellectually, I am already on a graduate level, according to my father.  I am not convinced, but whatever floats your boat, Dad.  All parents think their children are exceptional.  Anyway, passing whimsies of graduate school turned my thoughts and the conversation to what I’m planning after Spring Arbor.  I told my parents that quite honestly, I do not know, and do not care to plan anything.  My dad started throwing out different ideas, and, despite my self-pitying attitude as of late, I felt myself inspired to at least think positively about my future.  What would I do without such loving support and encouragement in my life?  (Answer – quite literally, be a bum without a future)

Subsequently, when we returned home, I plopped down onto our couch, fired up my dad’s laptop, dug the Americorps form from my messenger bag, and started a brief sojourn into research.  I still need to clarify a few details, but as of now, my plans are to participate in the Michigan Service Scholars Program, using my work for OIR and perhaps my position as an SLA for hours.  In order to log the appropriate amount of hours, I further plan to volunteer with Habitat for Humanity in Detroit this summer…which makes me exceptionally excited!  For the last couple of years, dreams of working with/for Habitat for Humanity have flitted in and out of my mind.  Now that I am soon to graduate from school and begin my real life, I can bring these desires to fruition!  An opportunity to help people, using my hands, body, physical strength (you know I’m ripped!) to create something tangible, to make changes I can see – this is what gets my blood pumping.  And, there is no doubt I will be learning and growing and being stretched along the way.

Maybe graduating from Spring Arbor University won’t be so bad after all.  But I need to make the most of it while I am here.  Which starts with sleeping…and waking up tomorrow, ready to serve.  Let us begin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m36OWibR6nk