Hospice Volunteering- Reflection

When I was first told about the Service Learning Project, I was unsure as to what type of project I should choose. I could have chosen something that would be easy and might not require much effort, or I could choose a project that would really help me grow as a person and even help me in the future with my career. After much thought, I decided to choose the latter. I chose to volunteer/visit with hospice patients in the city of New London and in the surrounding areas.
At first, the only glimpse of what hospice really was, I had seen when my great aunt became a hospice patient. It did not look to be as emotionally difficult as I quickly learned it was. I think that some people think of people as just their patients, which is professional and correct, but as a hospice volunteer I saw them as just people. I interacted with them for many hours, as well as interacting with their families. When I met their families and listened to the stories that they told about their life before they became sick, they became people to me. Another very startling fact about being a hospice volunteer is that the patients that you see have a limited amount of time to live. One day they are alive and talking, and the next day they are gone. Having had patients that I visited with pass away, I have experienced this pain.
On the bright side, there were many positive things that I learned from my service project, and many positive things that I was able to take part in. For example, an elderly man named Phil that I had been visiting was celebrating his birthday and he invited me (and made sure that I could make it) to his birthday party. I also was able to gain experience in how to not become emotionally attached to patients. I would like to become an Oncologist, which is a doctor that treats Cancer. Not all types of cancer are fatal, but some are. In fact, a patient that I visited had pancreatic cancer, which is usually always a fatal diagnosis. I learned a lot about the biological aspects of cancer, as well as it’s affect on families and the people themselves; making me want to treat and/or cure it even more.
I did not experience any problems with my volunteer experience.
The Service Learning Project that I took part in was rewarding in many ways, and I hope to continue volunteering.

Cellular Respiration

Working in a group for my service learning project was a great experience, especially working with Cody, Liz and Stephen. They have taught me a lot about cellular respiration. We had to break down the steps and stages of cellular respiration. This was a huge challenge for me because I did not really understand what was going on during all the stages but my group helped me out a lot. I finally understood all the stages for the most part but once the final animation is done it will be a lot easier to get the different stages. We had to read off parts for the animation which was difficult with some of the words that we used in it. This helped me gain speaking skills which can help me greatly in my future. Another thing I got out of this service learning project was working as a team. It is not always easy to work with a few people to all agree on what to say or what the animation should look like. Our group did an excellent job working together and everyone put the same amount of effort into it. I also learned how to help with the animation on the computer. I have worked on the computer with photo shop and doing some videos in high school, but this was a lot different. Once I got the hang of how to make a tally screen it went by pretty fast. Once we complete our project we will send it to some high school teachers, some our old ones and some high schools around here. We might even send it out to all the college professors to see if they can use it. We are going to also put it on YouTube for anyone to view it or use it. Overall, this service learning project was a good idea because everyone had different ideas where they could help out the community. Some were interacting with people or animals and some were making something to inform the community about. I learned a lot more than I thought I would have by doing a project like this one because I am pretty good working with people but I am not that good at putting things together. I thought the animation of cellular respiration was a difficult task to work on but we could do it and hopefully it will benefit many people in the future.

Prairie Chicken

Since my last post I went out one more time with TWS and helped record the numbers. The DNR was no out with us this time but it was still fun to go out and do. We had to leave a little earlier this time, 430am to be able to be in the blinds before it started getting light out but we were in Buena Vista at about 5ooam and in the blinds by about 515am after a long walk through the prairie. This time it start a little faster than the last time, we started seeing the chickens at first light pretty much, but it turned out to be an overall slow morning again. This time out we only saw 5 total prairie chickens, 3 males and 2 females ( I managed to get some pictures, but they never really did come close enough for any of them to turn out). Overall I spent probably about 9 hours in a wood blind smaller than anything I ever want to have to sit in, very uncomfortable but the time went by pretty fast with things happening. The said that usually the prairie chickens come right up within feet of the blind to dancer and show off for the ladies, but I didnt get to see any of this. Overall this whole project was fun to participate in, I also got to go out and help the community (DNR) by helping count the chickens. I think that this was a good learning experience and anyone that gets the chance to do it should give it a try. I like the project, anything with the outdoors is fun to me, and this had a little extra to add to it.