On September 6, 2014, it was the Day of Service, a whole day full of different volunteer activities for students to participate in. When my group of friends and I entered the event, we had already decided that we wanted to do Books without Borders since it seemed like we could stay together and still have fun. But when we walked into the event room, it was already crowded and most of the tables were already full of people. We tried to look for the Books without Borders sign but it was nowhere to be found, so we just quickly sat at an empty table so we wouldn’t get split up without even looking at what we were doing.

It ended up being volunteer work for the WaterWatch club. When we first read the description, all of us were a little disappointed. In this activity we had to help with a campus clean up. Walking around in the heat picking up trash didn’t exactly sound appealing, but it ended up being more enjoyable than I had ever expected. We were split up into groups of 10 and we were given gloves, a trash grabber, and trash bags, and we quickly set out.

We realized there were so many cigarette butts everywhere. Our campus has designated smoking areas, but it obviously wasn’t making much of a difference. At the end we talked about how it would be a good idea to raise awareness about this issue and have more campus clean-up events. It might even be a good idea to have more designated smoking areas closer to the main buildings since the smoking gazebos are far away and smokers may find it hard to go to a gazebo and make it to class on time.

Overall, it felt like a huge accomplishment when we were done. I hope to participate in more campus improvement events like this and to become even more involved in Stockton.