Doing What For Who?

I've reached the point where I mostly know what I'm doing, when I'm doing it, and who I'm doing it for concerning experiential learning. It that statement sounds like a precursor to a confusing educational experience, that's because it is. My degree is in integrative studies; integrative, indeed! Everything I do seems to run together and I frequently forget why I'm doing whatever it is that I'm doing. Luckily I can say from experience that real life is not like that. You know what is similar to real life, though? The fact that things are dreadfully boring one moment and then all of a sudden you've been given fifty million tasks to complete by some ridiculous deadline. I once asked my good friend working in graphic design if she could ask her boss for an incomplete. Bad news -- it might work in college but unfortunately it doesn't work like that with clients.

I had been tossing and turning in bed at night for weeks because I still hadn't heard anything about my marketing internship for New Century College. Last week was particularly bad, actually. Thankfully, the email finally came on Wednesday and I felt relief for a short while. That didn't last long. Now I am feeling anxiety about all of those hours I need to complete. One hundred and thirty five hours. I've decided to put in 6-8 hours on Wednesdays and Fridays. I haven't done the math or cleared it by Sarah yet but I think that should be sufficient.

My first assignment was to find the names and contact information of all the guidance counselors at all of the high schools in Virginia and DC. I put in six hours on Friday and to my sheer delight found the job to be just mindless enough to listen to music while doing. I do in fact see that there is some importance to what I was doing; this information is going to be used to let high school students know about NCC. However, the gathering of that information contributed to my music listening time. Had I not done this task, I wouldn't have taken the time to listen to Bon Iver's Bloodbank or Plants & Animals' Parc Avenue. I'm not saying this to be snarky; I'm saying this because music is important to me. In a way, I look forward to Wednesday. I'm probably going to spend some more time with Parc Avenue (so far it's been wonderful) but I will also select a few more albums in my "to listen to" pile to listen to while I work.

I haven't officially started my work for Luthern Campus Ministry. I haven't had time. Ben sent me an email with my first task but I haven't even looked at it. I'm unsure of when I'm going to do that. Unofficially, I've done plenty. For the past three weeks I've hung flyers on Monday nights after class for United College Ministries and some of those flyers overlap with LCM activities. I also planned last week's service with Ben Masters; let me just tell you, it turned out beautifully and made me very happy. I am always incredibly self-conscious when it comes to church matters because I don't know the Bible very well and I'm horrible at remembering church music. I came up with this theme of joy and connected all of these non-churchy things to God but then the Bens had to come up with the Bible and church music portions. Both of the Bens -- they do such a good job of backing up my ideas with substance that will allow them to be taken serious in that churchy sort of way.

Of course, I'm not really sure how to count hours on this. Surely church planning counts; I have learned A LOT from it. It's taught me a little bit more about the Bible and church music but also about how to work with other people and not be in charge. Justified; church planning counts. The execution of the service? I'm going to count that as well. The grocery store trip and cooking the food for the service? Does that count? I made phone calls back and forth to figure out the food situation; it was business. The food wasn't for me (though I did nibble at it). Whatever; it counts though it carries less weight than planning in my mind.

Oh, man. Adding another dimension of confusion -- weighted hours. Remind me to not think of that anymore, please.

I'll probably do some significant flyering on Monday night for LCM and maybe Tuesday I'll be able to open that email and get some work done for Ben Buss. That's the plan for now.

Is the mysterious Personal and Social Entrepreneurship EL credit even worth mentioning at this point? At first the professor was making it up as she went along but now she's given us this project that is similar to the underpants gnome model from South Park. And actually, that model makes a little bit more sense to me. Pick something where there is a need and find a way to make a profit or make it more efficient. Instead of starting something ourselves, we're going to organizations and.......? We're not volunteering. We're observing? Finding ways to make them better and somehow getting a business plan out of that. I don't know; it wasn't terribly clear to me. I also strongly dislike how the project automatically went to social matters such as hunger and homelessness. Heavy social matters are not my forte. Sorry.

The good news is that there's a whole class involved with this chaotic project so it's not just me. I have out'd myself as extremely dissatisfied with the mess so I already look like a jerk but on the other hand, I've already made a decision -- I'm going to volunteer at the Katherine K. Hanley shelter tonight with LCM and while I'm there I will speak with someone about the place hopefully. Of course, I'm not exactly sure what I'm looking for....should I be asking about problems they're having? Holes in the budget? I guess I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

The disappointing thing is that I really had my own project in mind that had to do with Personal and Social Entrepreneurship. It was perfect; I was going to try to start a vegetarian cooking club on campus. I brought it up and it was shot down pretty quickly because no one could see it as being in the same category as feeding the hungry, helping the homelessness, taking care of the elderly, teaching the children, and so on and so forth. Someone tried to think of it as a health-related but to me, that's not what it is. It would fill a social need. All of the things I ranted about concerning WGMU and not fostering of a sense of community........that would be the point of this. Getting together a group of individuals with something random in common -- vegetarianism -- and gathering at the table for a meal and conversation.

So there you have it; I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to find time for all of this stuff in addition to the classes, homework, and paper-writing but this is what I signed up for. Oh, well.