Personal Reflection on Service Learning

This semester has been one of the toughest I've had yet in my college career, yet. Whether that's because I decided to overload myself with classes to graduate early, while keeping the same workload of 48 hours a week, while also trying to keep up with my side writing career, and my family, it's just been excruciatingly tough. I've let a lot of other areas of my life fall apart, just so I've been able to keep up the struggling balance that I self-imposed upon myself this semester.

However, despite it all, it's also been an incredibly amazing one too. For the first time in years, I've been able to take in-person courses. I've been able to sit in and actually listen to my professors lecture the material and explain it in a way that online classes aren't able to. I met a couple of great friends that I may never see again after we graduate as we're all completely different majors with vast career goals, but who made my return to campus and college life, that much more enjoyable.

This course, University Colloquium, has helped me put a lot of important things into perspective. I didn't understand or have the slightest idea what sustainability was or how I, a lonely human, played into all that. I had no idea that the planet was in as bad of a condition as it is, and I honestly thought that there wasn't anything that I could do to change things. I just assumed because I was one person, that I couldn't do anything.

“Sustainability means enduring into the long-term future (Robertson, 2017, p. 3)."

But I'm not proud enough to admit that I was wrong. I learned that, like the quote above states, it's all about prolonging our resources and doing the best that we can, when we can. There are no deadlines on when to act and what can be done, as long as you think it, you can do it. And that's such an important mindset to have. Just go out there and try, and even one person is able to affect change.

(Gresham, 2022)

I would say, personally speaking, that the service-learning project was by far my least favorite part of this course. I think that's because all I was doing was helping raise the funds for the charity and nothing more. I think I wasn't as connected to the particular community partner and project because I wasn't directly seeing the effects of my work. Whereas my classmates, whose service-learning projects were volunteer-based, got to really be involved in what the organization stood for and really see the impact that it was having on the community around them. I do wish that my group had followed those lines a little more, but I do know that we initially had a lot of problems with scheduling conflicts and the fundraiser was on the simpler side of project ideas. Though that's not to say, it wasn't a lot of hard work. Getting people to donate their money--especially on a college campus--is SO hard!

Reference:

Robertson, M. (2017). Sustainability Principles and practice. Routledge.

Photo: (Gresham, 2022)