For my service project, I volunteered at Riverside Methodist Hospital. I worked as a greeter at the front desk. My job consisted of being a bright smiling face to the visitors as well as assisting visitors and patients to various parts of the hospital.

Riverside Methodist Hospital is actually one of Ohio Health’s largest hospitals and it can be quite difficult to navigate. I remember when I first started working there and thinking it was more of a maze than a hospital. Luckily, I had a “Volunteer-in-Training” badge; there are also maps and signs all over the hospital. I got quite a bit of help from the receptionist. I was also lucky that it wasn’t too busy when I first started working there. When I first started volunteering I began working at from 7am to 9am on Wednesdays. However, that quickly became unmanageable due to my non-existent sleep schedule.  To keep my attendance more consistent, I began working in the evening from 5am to 8am on Fridays.

The shift allowed me to a variety of amazing people as the desk has far more volunteers in the evening. I have met students from OSU that I would have never ran into otherwise and also made friends with a few older volunteers. I was surprised to see the range of volunteers that the desk has, but everyone is wonderful. It’s like a small party and we all adore helping the visitors. I’m also glad that I shifted to the evening because there is more variety to who comes to the hospital while in the morning most people are just coming for surgery and need to be taken to the orange area. It’s a bit scary when someone needs to go to the emergency room in the red area, but I can’t stop smiling when I get to take families up to the maternity wing in the yellow.

I have also recently applied to become a desk assistant so it will be interesting to have more work at the desk and actually be able to look up patients on the hospital database.

For the part of the project, my roommate and I decided to try something different that the Asian food that we good for every weekend. We went up the street to get Cajun food. We visited a little place by the name of Da Lavee. It was quite different for my taste buds but I enjoyed the jumbo shrimp with rice. What I did not enjoy was discovering that my roommate took a picture of me eating without my knowledge. I’m just glad I was wearing make up at the time.

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