Tuesday 18 February 2014

Community service.

One of the rudiments of the program I'm on is...yes, you've guessed it.
Community Service. 

Nevertheless, deciding where you think you'd volunteer in the near future can be a hectic job at times.
I remember just after I got selected for this exchange year, a part of me was briskly supportive of the belief that the more community service hours I got, the better it would be for me once I get back. 
Not the case, whatsoever. 
I've been in the United States for more than five months now and I'll be honest, I'm not proud of the number of hours I've summed up so far. Not that I haven't or anything. My mediocre record makes me feel 'voluntarily inferior (If that's a thing)' to my peers. 
I mean, just look at everyone!. They're working their tushies off (which is good) and I'm here typing this draft on a fine Tuesday evening, regardless of the fact I, at this very moment, could be helping an old lady cross the street or something of the sort.
 Okay, maybe that was rude. 
Volunteering at MercyCare would be more appropriate. 
I have a friend. Great guy. Amazing personality. I won't name him, but just for the sake of it, let's call him Sir Work-A-Lot. He's currently in Massachusetts right now and let's say, is in Harvard (I bet he wishes this was real). Now, me and him, with a couple of more students from Karachi, came to the US at the end of August. A month later, I get a message from Sir-Work-A-Lot and we chat like the friends we are till we end up talking about community service. 
I hadn't even started yet. 
And he already had 83 hours. 
And I'm just staring at the chatbox like..


Okay, now, now. I'm not that much of a terrible person as you think I might be. I did volunteer at a couple of cool places. Here, have a look yourself.


 Hornell Animal Shelter 
Nothing beats the feeling when you're among your own kind. Wait, that came out wrong. What I meant was, the people who work there, they're just bow-down awesome. I was privileged to work with dogs and cats (And the people, too). No, I don't hate on any sort of canine or feline zoological being.They're all equally precious to me and the time I spent at the shelter was one of my best. Period. 

Babe was one fine French Mastiff. 

              YMCA                      

 Imagine yourself blended into a plethora of new faces looking up (literally) to you and trying to surpass the other in who gets your name right, or should I say, pronounce it right, first. If you haven't figured it out, I coach little kids with a buddy of mine. If you know me well, you would willingly bet what sport, too. Indoor soccer. It's just so, for a lack of better word, cute. If kids, running parallel to each other, thudding their way across the gym with a soccer ball at their feet and accidentally step on the ball leading to a dramatic crash on their buttocks doesn't make you laugh, then what does?


Fun fact about me: I didn't volunteer anywhere the first two months after I moved to my local community.

Unquote.

No comments:

Post a Comment