The honors program has open me to many opportunities already.  First, it has given me many great friends.  More importantly, however, it encouraged me to go to different events to get involved on campus.  The first one being the Day of Service.  This was definitely one of my favorite days at Stockton so far.

First, there were four different stations.  At some of these stations you could pick different events to go to.  So the first one I was in with Circle K.  Here I chose to sew pillows for Project Linus.  I love this organization.  I learned about it freshman year at my high school.  My math teacher, and senate advisor, Mr. Leon Vargin introduced it to my school.  The day before Thanksgiving the middle school takes the half day to make blankets for the project, and as a senate advisor I was able to go and help.  Therefore, when I saw the chance I went straight there.  I was able to make a teddy bear pillow in my allotted time.

After this I went to work with Active Minds.  I also enjoy this organization a lot , and I haven’t even been able to get active yet.  Here we painted rocks with encouraging words and created pins to wear.  I also helped make ribbons for  suicide awareness.  I use to also do this for my high school for my teacher, so I was definitely struck with a bit of nostalgic happiness.  It was also something I really needed because the repetitive action was very calming for me.  The painting the rocks was also very nice to do as a way to release some stress.  The girl next to me painted a pretty little sunset, and I was really surprised how she fit the entire thing onto a rock.  Either way it has been really nice to walk around campus and see the rocks everywhere.  I am still looking for mine!

Next was my favorite event.  It was the meal packing station.  It was so empowering to know what I was doing then would actually affect people and actually help them.  I know that things like Project Linus gives people things in hospitals and it’s nice to know I did something good, but with that meal packing event it was a different kind of volunteerism.  It was like building a house, but in a much shorter time; so more effective rather than a do-a-good-thing volunteerism. Either way it certainly pumped me up and we do it so fast.  I loved the music too, it made it a lot of fun!  We made a really nice system and we even finish our allotted meals early.  I also got to hit the gong, which was fun.  This section affected me the most.  It showed me how much people can do to help one another, and made me think why we do not do it as much as we could.

The last section was the civil discourse section.  This station I appreciated, however, I still have mixed feelings about it.  I was slightly confused why it was included in a day focused on volunteering, however, I liked it.  It was certainly eye opening.  It also struck up good conversation with some of my friends.  It made me realize that I actually didn’t know these people for as long as I felt like.  At one point my friend and I actually started having a debate, but after that I think it only made me understand them more and now we debate on a regular basis.  It was also nice to do this, without it ending in a fight, but actual have a civil discussion where the two people disagree.

This day was extremely exciting for me, and I am so glad I went.  I cannot wait for the next one to occur. It was a great motivator for the coming weeks and only encourage me to join certain groups and make my own change.  I was so excited to join Active Minds afterwards at the Get Involved Fair.  I cannot wait for the rest of the year and the other volunteering and service I can do with, and for Stockton.