Month: November 2019

Service Engagement: Volunteering at Community Commitment

During my first semester at Ohio State, I signed up to volunteer at Community Commitment. When I first signed up, I had no idea what I was really getting myself into. All throughout high school I had volunteered both within and outside of school. I had volunteered at blood drives, festivals, carnivals, food pantry’s, etc. I loved volunteering and helping others. I loved to give back and help improve people’s lives. I was really excited when I got accepted into the Advocates for Community and Education Scholars because this meant I would be able to have more access to continue volunteering and giving back in my college career.

After arriving at the Union for Community Commitment, I found out I would be volunteering at a community garden in a Columbus neighborhood. I was so excited to go out into the community, get off campus, and learn about the surrounding community I was now a part of. Once we arrived at the garden, we met with the owner of it and she talked about the history of the garden, how it came to be, and then assigned us jobs to complete. The job I was tasked with was walking around the surrounding neighborhood and picking up trash and then pulling weeds in the garden. While walking around the neighborhood I was able to see what the community was like while also helping and cleaning it up. Once we got back to the garden to begin pulling weeds, a family arrived and started to help out by joining in on the volunteering. Several of the kids of the family loved interacting with us and loved that they were able to help out the “big kids”. At the end of our volunteering, we met back up as a big group and talked about our experience during this volunteering event and service. We talked about what we just did, why, and reflected on why it was important.

I found the trip to be very rewarding. This volunteering event opened my eyes to the new community I was a part of. I was able to commit to service in the Columbus community. I was able to volunteer and help out in the community garden and interact with people who I would not normally interact with if I would not have gotten off campus. Overall, I think that the volunteering experience helped to continue my drive and desire to commit to service in the Columbus community throughout my years at The Ohio State.

Educational History Narrative

During my senior year of high school, I took a College Credit Plus Class, English Composition 1101.01. Since this class was a College Credit Plus Class, I received the college credit for the class even though I took it in a high school classroom setting. In this class I learned about how to write a college level paper, how to incorporate and cite sources, and how to make a claim and support it with evidence I found online and in books. The first paper we had to write was an Educational History Narrative. For this paper, we had to write and talk about a personal experience or feeling we have had in our lives regarding our education and why we had these feelings. The memory I chose to reflect on and talk about was my love for reading.

I really liked remembering and reflecting on my love for reading from a young age. I enjoyed asking my mom about how my love for reading started and what she remembered of it. It was interesting hearing her view on things and comparing them to my memories and views on how my love for reading began. I also enjoyed looking at how I have developed as a person because of this and how this feeling has affected my academic career.

This paper was my introduction to writing college essays and made me interested in taking more time to reflect on myself and to realize where I once was and how far I have come since then. This paper allowed me to examine and reflect on a portion of my life that seemed so insignificant at the time but ended up being one of the most influential times of my life for my academic career.

Educational History Narrative- Morgan Mayer