Jamie Hughes- Service Learning Log #3

April 30, 2007
Hours Worked: 2

For this service log experience, I worked in the kitchen at Project Angel Heart. I drove there with Marisa and Megan. In the car, we talked about what we thought we would be doing like cutting carrots and ladling soup. When we arrived, the other volunteers were already hard at work assembling this week’s food. We washed our hand and grabbed an apron. At first, all three of us were cutting celery together at a table. We grabbed a knife and started slicing. We were told to cut the whole piece, even the flowery top. As the bucket got full with diced celery, my hand got sore and started to cramp. Mid way through cutting, three other fairly young volunteers came over the help us. The girl I was standing next to was named Amanda. She is a student at DU in another writing class that works with Project Angel Heart. She asked us if we were the class that might be interviewing them for our final paper and we said yes. We chatted about our classed which eventually lead to talk about our majors. She is a Biology major like me, so we talked about what I had to expect for these next few years. She is a junior so I told her my interest was in physiology and anatomy and we talked about those type of classes. This made cutting celery go by much faster. When we finished, we cleaned out the big freezer. We swept and mopped the ground. To do this we had to take the food out and then put it back in. Not much talking took place during this event. After the freezer was clean, I helped mop the rest of the kitchen and then it was 7:00 and we headed home.

This kitchen work was also a new and different type of volunteering experience to me. I like seeing change in a concrete form; one slice of celery at a time. The conversation with Amanda helped me academically. I have been worried about being a Biology major because it will be tough and it is hard fitting in traveling abroad, which I really want to do. Amanda said she did travel to Europe and that although Biology is hard, she enjoys the challenge and the labs. She helped me to realize that any major is difficult and I have to stick with something that I find interesting, not just take the easy route through college. By this volunteer section I made a connection on how volunteering is a lot like school. The people we are helping have unclear futures and they lead one day at a time, living an unpredictable life. In school, I have to take it one lecture and test at a time and not jump to conclusions. Both situations live with uncertainty about the future and I have to take the present and make the best out of it.