What Is The Impact Of Being On National Honor Society

Being on National Honor Society and sports teams throughout high school, I had enjoyed participating in many volunteer experiences before coming to Drake. Every year our basketball team would collect food around our community to be donated to various food drives in nearby cities. With only general assumptions about food pantries, I always wondered how they worked. Now, after being able to volunteer at the IMPACT food pantry over the last few months, my original assumptions about food panties has transformed. The service-learning class I took this semester challenged many other perspectives in my life. The fact that the people I served at IMPACT were similar to me challenged my beliefs. Before volunteering at IMPACT I stereotyped the people
Having the opportunity to make new, diverse friends around the community impacted me as a person. The people I met not only included the people I served, but also included the people I worked alongside of me in the food pantry. Since I volunteered at the same day and time every week, I was able to become familiar with many new people. In fact, many of these people were even able to connect to my life. One day I had a conversation with a man I volunteered with numerous times whose name was Steve. The first time I met Steve the food pantry was relatively quiet that day so we had a conversation about our lives. Steve told me that he used to work as a funeral director in the Des Moines area for many years before retiring recently. After he told me this, I shared that my dad is a funeral director, and he used to work at Dunn’s funeral home in Des Moines. I told Steve my dad’s name and he said that he knew who my dad was and even worked with him. Steve and I made a connection working together at IMPACT that created an instant friendship between us. This is just one of the many friendships I developed while
Being blessed with good health and opportunity, I take pride in myself for being able to use my talents to help others that are not as fortunate. I realize I have only taken small footsteps in my overall life service learning. However, I know that in the future those small steps will turn into strides of progress in from serving my community. The feelings that I have felt throughout this service learning course have allowed me to envision my future very clearly. I know that the connections I have made this semester will encourage me to continue on completing my ultimate goal: to make the world a better