Week 3

                  As I worked today I was reminded of the assumption we discussed at the beginning of this semester that service is good. I was also reminded of what one of the people we had a discussion with at the West End library said when she conveyed the message that when “they” have us come into a community to pick up garbage on the corner “they” are wasting our talents. At Cornerstone today we cleaned a kitchen that the school no longer uses and moved aluminum folding chairs from storage and took them to the dumpster. Though it bores me, I am perfectly fine with doing manual labor. However, what annoys me is when the work I do is of no consequence. Aluminum can easily be sold as scrap metal at about $1 per pound and we moved at least 50 chairs. Estimating the weight of each chair to be about 7 pounds this could have netted the school about $350. One teacher even requested to set aside 10 chairs for her as she walked by and I assume asked what we were doing with the chairs. Essentially, there were many different ways that I would have considered me moving chairs being service. Today I did not feel as if my time was being used in service but as cheap labor.       

                  I don’t blame anybody for why I felt the way I did today  by doing the work we did, but I like knowing that the work that I am doing has some sort of overall goal or long-run objective. Service is definitely a complicated concept in itself, and the way I see it, at times it can be hard for someone to find service work for a group to do. Overall what I learned from this experience is that as I progress through life and explore how I am supposed to serve it should not be in something that I am just doing to do but rather something that I do because I want to see the long-run objective accomplished and has a mission that I believe in.        

-Julian