For this workshop, I went to the Blood Drive on the 7th of October. When I received an e-mail that there would be a blood drive, I was slightly interested as I had never donated blood. At first, I didn’t know this would count as a workshop too, and as I found out about it, I was most certain to go. It was more complicated than I thought: what I had in mind was to simply give blood, but I was told to read something beforehand, write a form and wait. And so I did. As I was waiting in line, I realized the room was divided in half: the inner room was where the actual “donating blood process” was going on and the other (where I was waiting in) was where each of us were being tested of whether or not we are eligible to donate blood. My turn came, and a doctor asked of which countries I had been to before I came to the U.S., what my blood type was, placed something beneath my tongue and took a bit of my blood. What he then said was that I wouldn’t be able to participate because I didn’t have enough iron in my blood. I couldn’t understand at first, but I soon did, and what came in my mind was relief. Relief that I won’t be having to stick a giant needle in my arm and take out what seemed like a liter of my blood. And then I realized, that if I had donated blood with that kind of thought in my mind, it wouldn’t qualify as doing any good on my part. It wouldn’t have been any different as to being dragged by someone and forced to give blood. As I started eating the bag of nuts people had given me before I left (for the sake of increasing the amount of iron in my blood), I promised myself that the next time I make a decision like this, I will be doing it with a more determined mind.