Meiling Zheng

Participating in the Community Service Project has trained me in various ways: I learn how to access to reliable websites using the library database instead of Google; I learn how to communicate to employees of the non-profit organizations; I learn how to cooperate with my peers by working in a group. All of those that I learn from the Community Service Project relate to successfully seeking the useful resources and using them as your powerful tools.

College is a large community that contains plenty of resources we can access to, including faculty, peers, staff, support centers, the library, clubs, and etc. Tremendous resources are available to us but they are there to be used, not ignored.  We should take the initiative to seek for good resources and learn how to benefit from them. No matter how great the resources are, if we do not approach to them and make use of them, they become useless. However, in reality, a lot of students are lazy and do not bother wasting their time searching for those beneficial resources; instead, they just simply using Google. Of course, it is saving time and a lot easier to operate, but how relevant are they?

Doing Community Service Project, we are able to actually invest time and effort to research those non-profit organizations. Instead of Google, we learn to use Idealist, a better and relevant website that offers volunteer and internship opportunities. We actually take a close look at each organization on the Idealist and examine which one to work for next spring. We called and emailed the companies asking questions, such as what type of volunteer they need, when they need volunteers, where the location of company is, and etc. After all that research, I feel community service becomes really sincere project as opposed to unimportant feeling I got at the beginning of the semester. We start to manipulate the resources that are offered to us and this will become an edge in other courses and my future success at Baruch.

Personally, I start to get benefits from support centers, especially Writing Center. As a Chinese immigrant who speaks English as a second language, I really need help in writing and Writing Center helps me with this issue. With its help, my writing improves a lot even though I am still not a perfect writer. Next semester, I wish to join student organizations and clubs, because I want to be more interacted and associated with my peers. I wish to become not only a successful learner but also an open-minded person.

What does it mean to serve your community?

Nowadays, companies and institutions, when they look at the applications, try to find someone who has done community services. Therefore, many students, including me, had done community services in order to put them in our resumes. Nevertheless, merely putting them in our resume is not the significant purpose of doing community services. What are we missing? What is true purpose for doing community services?

Attending Baruch College as Baruch scholars, we have asked to complete at least eight hours of community service in our surrounding community per year. Doing community services, we are able to develop the responsibility to our society. As Baruch scholars, we are receiving many privileges that benefit us in our studies and lives, such as the laptops, the scholarships, the honor courses, the earlier registration dates, and et cetera. However, while we are enjoying those benefits, it is the time to consider what we can give back to our community. And this is the true purpose for doing community services, not for nice statements in the resumes but for developing responsibilities to our society and for helping other people who do not get privileges like us. We are not the only one who lives in our community. There are many other people out there, starving, unemployed, and homeless.  They need help, and we should help them.

As a freshman, I have not gone so far yet. Yet I don’t think being a freshman should be an excuse for not participating and involving in the community services. My group and I have started looking for non-profit organizations, which we are going to serve by next spring semester, for our community service project as Honor scholars. The community service project is the start but will not be the end.

It might surprise you to know that I am Chinese Korean who just came to America two and half years ago. My experience of studying in both Chinese and American high schools has gradually shaped me into a diligent and malleable person. When I was attending junior high school in China, I had to go to school at seven every morning and go back home around ten at night. “Weekends” only existed in dreams. Living under pressures of high competitions led by large population, we studied desperately in order to win others. I still remember one of my junior high school teachers told us “if you don’t study when everyone else do, you will fall behind others.” I started studying because of enthusiastic environment surrounded me that everyone was studying and everyone told me to study. Nevertheless, little by little, I realize that I am getting education not for floating with others but for enriching myself. Though coming to America has brought me hard obstacles in adapting different language and culture, it gifted me a lot of changes and chances which I had never dreamed of before, such as club activities and volunteer opportunities. I absorbed a lot of Chinese and Korean cultures progressively since I was little, and will continuously retain them, yet I won’t block myself from imbibing new cultures. I wish I could get rid of my timidness and spur myself to get involved in more various extracurricular activities with diverse people, so that I could get in touch with different cultures while I am attending college.