One of the many things that I learned about Stockton now that I am halfway through the semester is that there are constantly events happening somewhere on campus. Even one-time events such as the Freshman Convocation are frequent. Freshman Convocation was an information presentation followed by a question and answer session with Christina Baker Kline, who wrote Orphan Train. When I first opened this freshman common reading novel, I was instantly enthralled. The story follows two separate lives that connect in interesting ways. A panel that focused just on what the author had to say about the novel was an opportunity for growth and learning.
At Freshman Convocation, Baker Kline came to the Performing Arts Center and spoke to a huge crowd of freshmen about the inspirations for the book and any other details about it. It was very interesting to hear first-hand from the woman who created such a story based on real-life events. Although the novel itself focused on two story lines, Vivian’s being particularly dark, it was eye-opening to see that this bouncing from home to home actually happened to real children. It was enlightening and depressing to see the pictures that Baker Kline displayed as she talked. It made the events in the story much more real and raw, and really made me appreciate even more what I have.
The PAC was packed with students; and it was rather overwhelming. Everyone wanted to hear what Baker Kline had to say about Orphan Train. This one-time event was on Thursday, September 25th and sponsored by the freshmen seminar program and Student Senate. For me at least, being able to hear directly from the one who wrote this novel was amazing. She told the story of the lives she herself learned about that the main characters, Molly and Vivian, were based off of. Also, she informed us that there is a movie in the works. It is certainly an event that should be continued for future freshmen classes. It was a very enlightening experience, followed by a book signing, that deepened my appreciation for Orphan Train.

My first semester as a freshman at Richard Stockton is coming to a close. After only a little over 3 months I feel like I have grown immensely. Being away at college opens one up to many different perspectives and ideas. I learned that there are so many people from different walks of life with different traditions than my own. Because this fact intrigued me, I decided to go to the Multicultural Music Festival held by Stockton’s Entertainment Team (SET). I discovered this annual event in an e-mail that was sent to me by SET. I thought it would be interesting to see all the different cultural acts perform on October 29, 2014. The festival ran from 8-10 PM, so after getting dinner my friends and I walked in and sat down at one of the many tables that were set up.
Upon arriving I learned that this once-a-year event, because it is annual, was part of Student Cultural Month. This is the month of October when the goal is for students to have the opportunity to become more globally aware. When I arrived, there was a group of three people that were singing a song in a language that sounded like French. It was very interesting to hear the different sounds and melodies of French music in comparison to the American music that I am normally exposed to. When they went on a break, my friends and I inspected the tables in the back and saw they were serving lemon bars and churros. Of course, because Halloween was a mere two days away there was also a big bowl of American candy. When we arrived back at our seats, the members of the Asian Student Alliance were on the Campus Center Event Room stage. They were doing a rendition, complete with interpretive dance, of the popular song “I’ll Make A Man Out of You” in the Disney animated movie Mulan. They even included some Chinese words in their performance!
Following the Mulan music, Stockton’s A Capella Vocal Group, the “Stocktones”, took the stage and performed a set of 3 modern songs. Because this event encouraged all student groups to participate, it was appropriate to enjoy some American music. After hearing the 3 different sets of music, I was amazed at how different they sounded. Yet, they had the same effect, they all were a form of expression that was meant to bring a group of people together. At the Multicultural Music Festival, I learned that there are many different ways that people can share a message, yet music is the language that spans the Earth.

As my first community service event, I chose to go to CODI’s food pantry. CODI is the acronym for “Career Opportunity Development, Inc.” I learned about this group through the Stockton Annual Day of Service on September 6th. There were so many different organizations to choose from; the Event Room was overwhelming! After browsing around the room for a while, the CODI sign caught my eye. I asked what it was about and immediately knew that this was the service project I wanted to spend the day doing.
When my service group arrived at the food pantry, a energetic woman welcomed us. It was just a little building that had a good sized food pantry, a main room, and a huge cafeteria/warehouse space with cafeteria tables set up. She separated us into two groups, and one group went into the main room. This group worked on putting two cups of oats into plastic baggies followed by two cups of rice into separate plastic baggies. The other group, my group, got right to work organizing the food pantry. This was a much bigger job than we originally thought.
Although the room wasn’t necessarily big, there were shelves and shelves of food items lining the walls. They were organized by type of food (soup, peanut butter, cereal, etc.), but the dates of them were all mixed up. Our job was to take inventory of all the items in our designated zone/wall and throw away the ones that were expired over a year. Then, we would reorganize the food items that were still good with the one that has the earliest expiration date at the front. As part of the reorganization process, we were also told to look on each individual can or box for the expiration date and circle it. For the cases of items, we circled the expiration date of the contents as well as the quantity in each box. This made it easier for the employees to deliver food to people who came to collect all sorts of consumables. The items without an expiration date were put on the center table into the “distribute first” box.
After about 4 hours of organizing the food pantry, we all took a break for lunch then came back together and helped the people who were still bagging oats and rice. This turned out to be the most tedious part of our volunteer service. There seemed to be never ending bags of oats and cereal (when the rice was gone we moved on to big boxes of Cheerios)! It turns out that the reason for this was because it made distribution to those who receive items from this food pantry easier. Two cups of rice was a better serving size than a whole pound. When we finally threw away the last bulk box of Cheerios and sealed the last two cups in a plastic baggie, we had done our part.
When we were finished, we had a bit of extra time until our bus came and we spent that time talking to the woman who was with us, organizing. She was so grateful that we helped so much; it was worth all the sealing, bagging and reorganizing to hear what a help we had been to her. In fact, she would have to have done all this work that eight people did virtually by herself. It was so rewarding to know that we had helped hungry people, indirectly. Because of all our organizing CODI would be able to efficiently distribute food items to people that need it most.
I had the opportunity to talk to her one-on-one for a short time and she kept telling me how thankful she was to us. Also, I learned that people without jobs in need of a little extra money actually came to the building and would do odd jobs like sweeping and cleaning for a profit. It turns out that this food pantry helps people in need in more ways than just providing sustenance! I actually didn’t much mind the organizing of the pantry and talked to her about setting up a sort of collection box for CODI on campus. That would make this experience more than just a one-time event and I would have the chance to work more with this organization.

On Saturday October 25^th Stockton College held its 2^nd annual Make a Difference Day. The event was held and organized by the Office of Service Learning in hopes to promote service and good character throughout the campus. The day started in C/D atrium at 10 a.m. as about 70 to 80 students waltzed to find a service project that suited their interests.    Students had fewer options to pick from in terms of service projects than Day of Service, as only seven organizations needed volunteers for that day. Also a vast majority of the projects were off-campus that was less convenient for the students in terms of familiarity with their environment of the service project.                                                      I was lucky and happened to choose a project that was on campus right in the Office of Career Development. The office needed some assistance in scanning documents into the computer system in order to eliminate some of the clutter of boxes and folders of files lying around the office. While this seemed like an easy task it definitely took a toll as it was tedious and frustrating. A total of nine boxes of documents with about 20 folders a piece with about 100 pieces of paper in those folders had to unstapled and scanned. It seemed like a cruel and unusual punishment for six good-natured honors students.

Five people were working on removing staples documents, and when a folder was completed I ran the documents through the scanner. This continued until unfortunately the scanner jammed up and even the tech department was unable to fix it. A reflection session was held afterwards in which we all expressed our frustrations and boredom throughout the process. However, we expressed gratitude in knowing that the college was making an effort to go green and make the campus more environmentally friendly. At the end of the day we were proud and happy to give a helping hand to the cause.

On Thursday October 9^th Stockton kicked off its annual Homecoming and family weekend with the 9^th annual myths and legends panel in a jam-packed room L112. Stockton invited back around twelve alumni, and faculty who were a part of Stockton’s first or second school year. The faculty shared stories, laughs and opinions about the history of the school. They also took questions from the audience who were interested in learning more about the history of Stockton.

One of the hot topics that arose from the panel was the purpose of the college opening in 1969. The panel reached a general consensus that the reason Stockton opened was because the state wanted to provide an elite education for those who chose to attend a state school at the reasonable price of public education.

Another point of discussion was the reason why Stockton truly is a “distinctive college”. Distinguished professor Bill Daly went into great detail about the differences between Stockton and other schools. He says one paramount feature that makes Stockton stand out is the fact that it is a highly liberal institution. Students are able to learn what they want to learn without having the nagging requirements of learning what they did not. “If they decide they don’t want to learn how to write they don’t have to,” said Daly. The “GEN” courses are a distinguishing feature because students could take a class outside of their major and learn information just because they want to learn it

The panel also shared some humorous anecdotes such as Bill Daly’s story of a student back in 1969 who had asked for a neck tie because he was involved in a drug bust and never returned it. The panel also discussed the story of a cabin that burned down in a suspected arson in 1973. Certainly the Stockton Myths and Legends panel was both entertaining and informative and made everyone feel like they went to a college with a lot of history.

On November 18^th I attended a floor program held by my floor’s RA, Julie Eller. The program did not have a name, but it required each resident, as well as a few non-residents, to draw herself as a true-to-scale Barbie doll using regular printer paper and some colored pencils. The rest of the residents and I sat together in the common room as we drew ourselves and colored in what would be ourselves as Barbies, and then each of us had a picture taken with our respective doll, which will later be hung up on a wall in our common room.

The mission of this program was to bring to people’s attention the inaccuracy of Mattel Barbie’s body shape and size, and the detrimental effect this morphed body image has on the minds of small children who grow up playing with Barbie. Young children who play with a doll of seemingly ‘perfect’ proportions have their expectations of themselves set unrealistically high, which will affect them later in life and result in a morphed body image and low self-esteem, among other negative mental effects. Our floor’s RA, Julie, plans on taking a picture of each resident with her realistically-drawn doll and sending these pictures to the Mattel company in order to get the company to begin manufacturing dolls that are more realistic and of humanly normal features and proportions.

On November 3rd at 4:30 p.m., Professor John O’Hara’s Dissent in America class performed a play in the Campus Center Theater. I went because a good friend of mine told me she would be in the play and had promised me that I would be entertained. As I sat there, I was beyond amused; I was being educated on an event that I had never known about. The play was about the trial of Catonsville Nine, where nine defendants stole a couple hundred draft files during the Vietnam War and burned them with homemade napalm. The play demonstrated only the key events of the trial, and on a screen behind the actors, there were pictures of the people who were tried and the memorable quotes that were said by them. The play was powerfully moving, and had me questioning whether or not I would support these people’s actions.
Once the play was over, the professor asked the audience what they thought of the play, and asked if they had any questions. Many had their own reactions to the performance, but one particular man stuck out to me. He was an elderly man, and he spoke quietly but with a voice that made it clear that he had some sort of connection/memory of the event. He explained why the defendants did what they did and how, during that time, it was not uncommon for the people to try and intervene with the war on a personal level. I never like to get involved with politics and I never shed my opinion of what I thought of war or goes on in the battlefield because I always felt as though I did not have enough information. Who am I to try and intervene with the drafts; who am I to say that war is a complete crime against humanity, who am I to make judgments when I never had any of the experience? I never fought in a war, I was never in a war-zone, and although I know that war kills more lives than it saves, I cannot say that it serves no purpose. I always remained neutral on such topics because I feel as though I have not yet been fully educated enough to make a proper decision, but the play had me wondering if I should stop stepping aside and start questioning what goes on beyond my small view of the world, and I should start demanding answers.

On Saturday October 25^th, I attended Stockton’s Make a Difference Day. Make a Difference Day happens once a semester and is run by the Office of Service Learning. There were several volunteer opportunities to choose from that day. I decided to volunteer at the Community Food Bank to help pack boxes of food to give to those in need.

When we got to the Food Bank, the lady who was in charge for the day greeted us. The first thing she had us do was stuff envelopes with the Food Bank’s newsletters. It was not a hard task but it was a bit tedious. The group I was with decided to divide up the work assembly line style. One half of the group would put a flier in the newsletter and fold it up. The other group would then seal the newsletters shut. I was a part of the first group until the sealing group started to slow down and I offered to help them out. We folded and sealed newsletters for about ninety minutes until the lady came back and told us we could pack boxes now.

The group and I went into the back of the building where the warehouse was. In there were hundreds of cans and boxes full of food. The people who were leading the Warehouse Shift led us to some tables and told us what to do. They said that each person would be in charge of putting one food item in the box as the box moves down the table. I was in charge of putting the canned green beans in the box. By the end of the shift we packed several hundred boxes and we all had to go back to the campus. I enjoyed working at the Food Bank because I liked the fact that I was helping people receive a good holiday dinner.