Service Learning Reflection

Jessika Babb

Intro to Health Professions

November 22, 2017

) The service-learning activity that I participated in was volunteering at Ignite Pantry. I volunteered October 31, 2017 for the second shift which is from 2-5 pm and on November 7, 2017 for the second shift also. While I volunteered I was helping count items that people had pertaining to the amount of food that they could receive, I also helped go pick up the signs that they put outside to notify people of the pantry, and I also helped restock and organize the shelves to make the appearance more appealing.
) The purpose of the Ignite pantry is to provide food for students, faculty, and staff on campus. Their mission is to provide at least one full day of meals each week. Their goals are to inform people of the pantry because there are many students, staff, and faculty members who have food insecurities and are starving and for them to deliver at least one meal a week for someone in need is just a huge accomplishment. Another major goal of theirs is to make sure that everyone is aware of the pantry, and to spread the word of the pantry to make sure that everyone who is in need, knows a place that can help them.
) The services that this partner provides is a food pantry as well as a place of worship. They address hunger needs in the community by contributing to people that are hunger deprived. They provide meals for anyone who does not have the money or supplies to properly feed themselves daily. These services relate by contributing to the needs of the community. In the field that I want to work in, we contribute to the patients’ needs, essentially by making them feel better on the inside and out. Even though the dental field doesn’t really relate to working in a pantry, it does relate as far as human interaction and essentially not knowing what people have gone through in their life or is going through currently, so you should always keep a place for empathy and not judge anyone by their appearance.
) After reflecting on my first service-learning activity, my values, opinions, and/or beliefs had changed on the first day of me volunteering. On this day, someone had come in and was so happy to be provided with the food because he said that he had only had 2 meals in the last 72 hours. At that moment it made me realize how people I walk around campus and see daily, are not being fed adequately. It made me think of how I get meals and not finish them, just to throw them away not realizing that there are people that could use what I just wasted. It changed my perspective about a lot and now I’m less careless about the meals I receive and more aware of what people can appreciate more than I do. Also, the fact that there were people who came in there with an upset mood and left happier than ever, made me realize that I just made someone a little happier and that is all I really want to do in life. Even when I start to work in the dental field, that is my goal.
)Prior to Fall 2017, I was in Norfolk Technical Center where I was in the Dental Careers. In this program, I had worked on patients doing things such as cleaning, charting teeth, and teaching them overall dental hygiene. I also sterilized equipment as well as administered and processed x-rays. This was initially a program that prepared us for working in the dental field and in addition gave us enough experience and certifications to succeed in the field that we would like to be in. Based on the experience I have already had and the service learning experience, this impacted my desire to continue to pursue a career in the dental field because it just made me grow more as a person mentally. It makes me realize that helping people is one of the reasons that I want to be in the health field because it makes them happier and knowing that I changed someone’s mood in a course of meeting them for the first time ever, makes me feel like I contributed goodness to the world.
) Other than dental, nursing could relate to the service-learning experience that I did. Nursing is one of those occupations where you must be dedicated to what you do, you can’t just be in it for the money you have to have a passion for doing the job. Nursing is essentially helping the well-being of others and that’s kind of what I was doing for my service-learning experience. Personally, I would not pursue the nursing field because that career is very time consuming. They usually work 12 hour shifts which means that you don’t really have time for yourself or your family, so you must fit that into your schedule. Also, nurses must know how the entire body works and what things cause them and although that is cool, it also is very overwhelming. Nurses play a huge role in the interaction with not just their patients but the patients family and loved ones, meaning that if they must deliver terrible news to them, the nurse must put on a poker face and leave their feelings to the side. They initially must keep their personal feelings out of the way of their job and its some things that may push me to the point where I feel as if I could not deliver such news without feeling a profound sense of sympathy.