In my previous years, I have consistently volunteered over 100 hours every summer. Most of the time I was simply working as a teacher’s assistant in my summer camp and I had one year of volunteering in a Queens Public Library shelving books. There is actually one more volunteer opportunity that I took and that was volunteering in an ambulance corps. I do not really like to talk about it much and I will explain that later. So what does it mean to serve your community? Above all, it means to devote your time in building relationships and choosing to help others grow over your own needs.

As I said earlier, I worked in a summer camp as a teacher’s assistant and volunteered at the Queens Public library for over 100 hours each year. Honestly, these two don’t look that great on your resume. You volunteered, sure, but that’s what a ton of other kids do as well. It appears that those volunteer hours were simply accumulated to fulfill the requirement. However, I learned that those summers truly represent what it meant to serve your community.

For most of my summer camp experience, I was assigned to focus on 1 child (a year). Only one. Of course, I became friends with the other minions, but that experience with focusing on one child became very entertaining. I was given one child because that one boy was the nightmare of the camp. He couldn’t sit still. You couldn’t reprimand him or he would cry till no tomorrow. He could even speak English that well. I mentored Ricky in 2012 and Stanley in 2013. Those boys were just ridiculous. But I loved them. For two months, my pastor/camp director told me my job is simply to love them. I gave them my undivided attention. I helped them one step at a time. I did scold them on several occasions but after 100 hours of working with those kids, I knew that I made an impact. After working through all his pouting and inability to sit still, we learned that Stanley was actually a genius. He was at least one year ahead of his grade and his comprehension skills were top-notch. Ricky stopped his crying and began to speak English more fluently but is still quite naughty which is not always a terrible thing.

There isn’t much to say about my Queens Public Library experience except for the fact that I had to shelve books. Lots of books. Lots of fairy princess books which were taken down by little girls a minute after I reshelved them. I guess that counts as serving my community? they will never understand the pain of watching a perfectly organized shelf torn apart in a matter of minutes. But books aren’t meant to stay on shelves and I’m glad that my organizing was beneficial to them as it made it much easier (I take pride in it sometimes) to find.

My last experience was with the volunteer ambulance corps. Wow! That sounds cool! looks great to put down on your resume right? I actually took a class there and was a CFR (license expired). Sadly, I confess that I simply went there for a friend. Also for the experience. Who knows whether the medical field suits me? It didn’t. It turned out that I honestly did not like to go. I clocked in so few hours and only did so when my friend was there. I had made no long lasting relationships. It is definitely an example of not serving my community.

Through my volunteer experience, I learned that serving my community really involves creating relationships and investing TIME and ENERGY to make a difference. Doesn’t matter if it’s one little boy. Investing time to take part in someone’s life and impacting it, I believe, is what it means to serve my community. In Baruch, I hope to invest time in one or two clubs and not because they look good on a resume but because I am genuinely interested in it and want to get to know others who share my passions. As a Baruch Scholar with numerous privileges, I want to make a difference. I will be extremely disappointed in myself if I wasted my privileges to simply get a safe job and good retirement plan. With what I have been blessed with, I hope to give back to my society and like what the Ephebic Oath (which my high school Townsend harris made us memorize, but I forgot everything)  says, “leave my city better than I found it.”

(I’m sorry this turned out to be so long)