Past Service Work and Goals

When I was in eighth grade, I went on a mission trip to Tennessee. We went to an area in the mountains that had one of the highest poverty rates in the nation. We shared the story of Christ with the people we helped and we also did manual labor in their community. We did everything from building porches and stairs to building doors. In junior high and high school I was part of 4H. We did service work each year usually consisting of raking leaves for the town and elderly people in the community. For my Sunday school class in high school, we always distributed bags of fruit to the elderly people and we also raised money and bought Christmas gifts for the less fortunate in our town. I was also part of National Honor Society and we had a service project that we completed every year. I cannot recall what we did each year for that.

1. From this learning experience, I hope to get a sense of accomplishment. I am not going to lie; so far in the honors program it doesn’t really feel like I have done anything differently. It may be because it is all I know. I have taken the same style classes of everyone else that is in the graduating class of 2010 from Loras College. Since we are the “Honors” students, I feel like we should do something to prove that other than take some classes titled “honors.” Since the rest of our graduating class does not take a class like this and will not be doing the community service that we are required to do, I hope to get a sense of accomplishment from this class.
2. This has nothing to do with the class specifically, but more so the people in it. I hope that we can become more of a tight knit group. We have not really had our whole class together since democracy and global diversity. A lot of people have also dropped the honors program or graduated early, so there are only a fraction of us left from the starting group. I just hope that we can work together effectively and get a lot accomplished. I know we will not have a problem with this because we have a very intelligent group of people, but I just hope we can get closer as friends.
3. I would like to take something from this learning experience with me into the future. I cannot name what it will be specifically but I hope to gain something that will make me a better person and that I can express it to those around me. Since I do not know exactly what this will be, there is not much I can explain about it.
4. The last thing I want to accomplish from this experience is a sense of understanding about people from different walks of life. I know that the people that we will be working with will not have the same background as I had and I want to be able to listen and understand if the need arises. I want to gain a greater understanding of people as a whole. I want to be more sensitive to other’s feelings as well.