The Day of Service
I attended Stockton’s 11th annual Day of Service on September 6, 2014. This is a one-time event that takes place each semester at the college with both on campus and off campus service projects that volunteers can sign up for. These projects are designed to help not only Stockton, but the community around Stockton. It is also a great opportunity for the student volunteers to appreciate their school, community, and their own hard work.
At the Day of Service, there were many events to choose from, such as Books without Borders, playing Bingo with the elderly patients at Bacharach Rehab, doing a clean-up around the college, and helping out at a horse ranch. My friends and I decided that we wanted to all do an event together to make it more fun. We chose to volunteer for Waterwatch, which is the clean-up around Stockton, because it had many spots that still needed to be filled and many of us had done clean-ups before. We met up with everyone else who was doing the clean-up, split into groups of 10, and got our assignments. My group was assigned to clean college walk and the area around the campus center. We each took a trash bag and a pair of gloves and set off to clean up our campus. We picked up may different types of litter, but the most common was cigarette butts; we found them mostly around the campus center, nowhere near a designated smoking area. They were the most annoying thing to pick up because there were so many of them and they are so small.
Even though picking up the cigarette butts was annoying, overall I found the event enjoyable; I was with my friends, we played music and sang, and we helped make our school a better environment. And I gained a better sense of appreciation for the school and keeping it clean. When I see someone about to throw their trash on the ground, I remind them to throw it in a trashcan or I pick it up and throw it out myself. I also value the hard work it took to clean up campus; it was a really hot day and everyone was sweating, but seeing the finished product made it all worthwhile.