Think Beyond Your Campus: Engage in Service

As you may have read in one my my previous posts, people across the nation would celebrate MLK Day of Service this past Monday by engaging in community service projects.  Even the First Family joined the action to make it 'A Day ON, Not a Day Off.'

For some of you, it was a one-time thing.

For others of you, participating in MLK Day of Service may become an annual thing.

Then there are others of you who now have an itch to do community service projects more often.  If that is the case, here are some ways you could do it more often:

1. Find the community service center on your campus:  If you want to participate in or even lead community service projects, your university may already have an office that offers that programming to students.  Each university houses or labels these volunteer centers differently.  Wellesley College calls theirs the Center for Work and Service.  The University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign has the Office of Volunteer Programs.  Not every school has a community service center, but it is worth exploring if that is an option for finding projects.
2. Find service-oriented clubs on your campus:  Your school may or may not have a community service center.  Regardless, most colleges offer opportunities to do service projects through student organizations.  Think of Habitat for Humanity.  Also while some clubs, student professional associations, or fraternities/sororities are social in nature, they still could have a service component as well.  That is another way to incorporate service into your extracurriculars.
3. Find opportunities for service learning on your campus:  There are different ways to define service learning.  Scholars like Andrew Furco devote much time and energy into defining it.  For the sake of simplicity, we will say service learning occurs when a college offers courses that allow students to integrate service into their curriculum.  This is easy to find at too few colleges.  If you are at DePaul University, you need not look further than the Irwin W. Steans Center for Community-Based Service Learning & Community Service Studies.  If you attend another college, you may have to dig deeper by consulting with your academic advisor or another campus contact.  While my alma mater the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign did not have a service learning center, I was able to do service learning through a course offered by the sociology department.  I found out about it from a friend, and it was one of the best courses I  took in college.  Find out if your school offers a service learning course that fits your needs.  It just might become one of your favorite courses.  
4. Find service opportunities beyond your campus:  For some of you, doing service might not fit your campus life.  Perhaps you are too busy with a part-time job to do it as an extracurricular.  For others of you, your major might be so rigid that it is not feasible to fit a course with service learning into your class schedule.  I caught the service bug late during my undergrad.  By the time I started to realize what was available on my campus, it was time to think about life after college.  I got a job after school, but I still had the need to serve.  After a couple of years at my first post-college job, I did a year of service with the AmeriCorps program at City Year in Chicago.  After that, I did another year of service with the AmeriCorps*VISTA program at Massachusetts Campus Compact.  Those were a couple of the most impactful years of my career.  In fact, it was in those programs that I first learned about MLK Day of Service.  Research different programs to see if doing a year of service after college is right for you.    

Did MLK Day of Service make you want to serve more?  If so, how do you plan to incorporate more service into your life on campus … or your life beyond campus?  

Tell the U.S. Secretary of Education What You Think About College Affordability

I invite you to tell the U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan what is on your mind.  According to The Star-Ledger, Duncan will hold a Twitter chat at 8:30 tonight to get student feedback on college affordability.  If you are college-bound or already in college, use the hashtag #stuvoice to participate in the dialogue.

Because of the wonders of Twitter, the ability to directly share your feedback with a high-ranking government official in an efficient, real-time manner is a recent phenomenon.  Take advantage of that technology to let your voice be heard.   

If you are saying, "But I don't know much about the big issues," take time to do some research on them.  Go online and read some current news articles about President Barack Obama's proposed rating system and other policy matters.  It's always important to have general background knowledge before you participate in any discussion.

At the same time, do not underestimate the knowledge and opinions you have based on being a student.  If you have experienced or witnessed others as they work hard to afford college, you have a valid voice in the conversation.

I know many people who shy away from speaking up because they are not an "expert" on a given topic.  Remember that the purpose of this talk tonight is so that the U.S. Secretary could hear directly from the public.  If he wanted to hear a researcher's or education leader's opinion, he would have held a separate discussion with them.

He chose tonight to hear from you.

Make sure he does.
    

Finish Your Winter Break on a Strong Note

In college, students approach winter break in a number of ways.  If you're like many college students, you probably started your break the week before Christmas and will end it sometime after Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday.  This means many of you have about two weeks left of winter break.

Some of you are taking this time to make extra money.  Recently, I talked to a college student who knew she would not be able to visit her family overseas like she had wanted.  Therefore, she decided to do temporary work for an international education office at her university.  While processing student applications might not be the most glamorous work, she at least is getting paid and hopes that this could transition into a part-time job for the spring semester.

Others of you are taking this time to go on vacation.  When I asked the aforementioned student what her friend was doing during break, she showed me a picture from his current vacation in Brazil.  He planned to stay there for most of winter vacation so he would not have to suffer the brutal winter she was experiencing in her New England college town.

Then there are the rest of you who might not have chosen to work or to go on an exotic vacation for winter break.  If you are like me, you probably traveled back home to be with your family for the holidays, reunite with old childhood and high school friends, and just "do nothing."  After all, who would even think of working after an intense week of finals?  Also what else could you do if you didn't have the money to go on a "real vacation"?  These winter breaks tend to be fun, but they could also get old pretty quickly.  After all, when you're not hanging out with family or friends, how many hours of TV could you watch?

If this last scenario sounds a lot like your current winter break, there's still time to make the most of your remaining weeks before the spring semester starts!

1. Do professional development.  Remember last month when I suggested how you should prep for this holiday question:  What are you going to do after you graduate from college? You might have forgotten, especially if you were in the middle of finals.  Now is the time to revisit that question if you haven't figured it out already.
2. Volunteer.  Given the little time you have left on winter break, you could do a one-time volunteer job at a local pantry, shelter, or other nonprofit organization.  A couple good websites for finding volunteer work are Idealist and VolunteerMatch.  One popular day for volunteers is Martin Luther King, Jr. Service Day.  Volunteers across the country will serve to honor the legacy of MLK, Jr.  You should join them!
3. Reconnect with old friends and family you haven't seen yet.  Although you may have reunited with everyone on your must-see list, take a second look at your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and numbers stored on your phone, etc.  Is there someone you missed?  I always find that there's someone I neglected to text, call, or hang out with.  Make sure you don't miss your last chance before you go back to school!   

Alright, now choose any item from this list, and get started … or after your nap … whichever's most practical!