I woke up earlier than I had wanted my first Saturday morning at Stockton University, but I knew my day was going to have a lot of meaning to me, so I powered through my initial desire to fall back asleep and got ready for my day. I wasn’t sure what exactly to expect, but I hoped to leave feeling good about the work I’d done that day.

My first activity of the day was to sew pillows out of old fabric for AtlantiCare. My mom works for Children’s Specialized Hospital, so I knew she’d love what I was doing. Although I had never sewn anything in my life, an upperclassmen who had done this before was a huge help and taught me a simple sewing technique and so my service to my community started. That first girl who helped me really made me think that the Honors Program was one big community within the school. I wasn’t able to get an idea of that until she helped me learn how to sew. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to finish my pillow because of the time constraint mixed with my hardly amateur sewing skills. So, I moved on to my second activity of the day.

My next activity, which was my absolute favorite by far, was the meal packaging activity. My job was to refill the tubs of grain and rice while everyone else had various jobs of filling, weighing, and packaging the meals. The part of the activity I liked the best was hearing the coordinator yell out every 10,000 meals we packed. I was amazed how quickly we hit each 10,000 meal threshold and how many total meals we packaged: 10,000 in one hour! Although I hear the cliché saying, “Even a small number of people can make a huge difference!” a lot, this activity really made me live it out and I’m so proud that we could all make a huge impact on so many people.

My next activity was, honestly, the most underwhelming part of my day. I sat in the small theater in the campus center lobby and listened to a talk centered on New Jersey’s opioid epidemic and Chris Christie’s efforts to curb drug addiction in the state. It gave a lot of good information, but I craved real service and being active while sitting there. After the talk, I moved onto my last activity.

My last activity of the day was the Civic Service activity where we were able to “vote with our feet” and debate hot social issues. I liked this activity because I was able to hear different perspectives on issues that I had a very narrow perspective on. I actually changed my mind on one of the issues while people were debating, for which I was given praise by one of the people coordinating the activity. After we finished voting with our feet, I made a political poster that was posted on a wall with a lot of others. Some were funny, some were serious, but overall, I appreciated the wide variety of issues that Stockton students were passionate about. Can you guess which one was mine?

I’d give high ratings for the day as a whole. I learned a lot about how people can work together to make differences in the world, and it was a great first impression I had of the Honors Program at Stockton. Everyone was so helpful and so friendly, and I am so proud to be a part of the Honors Program.