By Sara Sang, S-L student in Community Learning
Sara is an international student in the America Classroom Program in the College of Professional Studies. She serves as a weekly conversation partner at Morville House.
I have gone to community service for several weeks. Every time I have a good time with my conversation partner [at Morville House] and it is also very meaningful, but I will discuss NU Service Day which I took part in recently. I chose an activity called Sole Train 5K 2016 Volunteering and I helped to manage the order like holding the sign on the fork road and cheering for runners. To be honest, I participated in this activity because I wanted to get extra credit, but after finishing volunteering, the meaning of taking part is beyond getting extra credit. I feel happy not only because I get extra credit but also I learned something new and it seems to have some relation with what I have learned in Community Learning class.
At that event, my task was holding the signboard and, at the same time, cheering for the runners to encourage them to continue running. I was so excited about this task, but when the race began, I found that I could not speak loudly to cheer for them as lots of Americans do, they cheered for runners loudly and had high-five with them. I really wanted to do like them, and their behavior was just like they are in that race. Then I began to think why I can not do like them, maybe because my character was a little introverted, and maybe because I was afraid that other people will say I was crazy. In China, the way people cheering for people is not as same as that in America. So I think it is a little like a video clip we watched in class called Don’t Assume How Retta Rolls. That video clip teaches us do not judge other people before you don’t know what they actually do and also be yourself. Sometimes you can overlook what other people say to you. Lots of people are influenced by others, they care about others view so that they cannot do what they really want to do, just like me in that event. But at the end, I could cheer for runners loudly, and what changed me is that a little girl, one of the runners, high-fived me. It really encouraged me to cheer for runners and she gave me a sense that I am a member of this event. So through this activity, I understand the video deeply and I also think I successfully challenged myself.
S-LOG 