Service Hour Reflection

      For my Sophomore Service hours I completed a variety of tasks with several different organizations. I worked at the Beacon, Challenger Football, A Mentally Challenged Bingo Party, and giving out toys at the hospital. At the Beacon, I was responsible for a number of tasks: first I helped make green beans (sounds a lot easier than it really is because it involved opening hundreds of cans to feed the number of people that showed up) and secondly I cleaned all the dishes, which too sounds a lot easier than it really is. At Challenger Football, I just played with the mentally disabled kids and gave them a fun great time of football. At the Bingo Party, I helped mentally disabled adults and kids play bingo. Finally at the Children’s Hospital, I helped give out toys to sick kids around Christmas time.

      Before helping with the service projects, I always feel disappointed to be “wasting” my day away to do required service for school. I always think that it is going to be awkward helping other people and not a lot of fun, but it never seems to happen that way. After every service project,, I felt great; I felt completely at peace and like I had just done something great. I think its so weird how we always hate our service hours but end up loving doing them after. I realized that, like we learn in Theology, we truly are ultimately fulfilled by God and our social aspects, which is shown by the great feeling of happiness that we feel after completing a service project.

      My service relates greatly to my Jesuit education because our education emphasizes the ambition to be Men for Others. I feel like I have successfully completed this task by helping the mentally disabled have fun, give toys out, and make food/clean for homeless or less fortunate people. I see these experiences connecting to my long term goals because I wish to develop myself to constantly do service and constantly help others, which I believe these projects has helped me move along my path. I think everyone should learn to love service because it is needed and a very fulfilling thing to do.

      I personally, loved doing my service hours with my dad. It’s great to see him out enjoying helping others even though he necessarily doesn’t have to help. It further makes my pops a good role model for me to follow through his regular and spiritual life. These service projects were very difficult at times but very fun at others and I am very thankful for having done them.