Pls Help, Honors is hard

Hey look its us nerds doing speaking about walking and washing things for dogs

The final session, where the first speaker shall be the last, and it turned out that the friends we made along the way were in fact our last speakers; We gave little intros about what we did, from walking dogs to volunteering in hospitals to helping kids who have lost a loved one. So we got some cool stories (Jesse and I saved ours for the video though, they were a bit too juicy for the gossip column) 

We also discussed other ways of helping out the community, like voting or donating blood. Donating organs also helps, but you kind of need them right now so, uh, leave them be for now.

So let me tell you about the time Brad passed out and I put up a TV:

SO this was just before a super good sale at best buy, and a particular TV went on sale that brad really wanted, now that he was using his TV as a computer monitor (gotta get that 1080p, scrubs). He had also just given plasma to get money to buy said TV, so needless to say he was not in peak physical condition. When we got back to the dorm, after hauling the thing up to his room (uphill both ways!) we were setting it up and Brad’s body suddenly decided it was done, and brad almost lost consciousness, yay! We got him a Gatorade and some rest, and he made it back to reality while I set up my good buddy’s TV for him.

So what I’m actually supposed to talk about: The mother daughter power duo of Johnette and Katherine Davis. Johnette discussed how money was important to society, but sometimes doing things not for money can really help out the community. For example she said that sometimes it feels better to do things for free, the warm fuzzies as opposed to cold hard cash.

Are you ready for some rambling because all I have to go off of is some lists of requirements because that was all this forum was. Strap in!

Welcome to Dot Your I’s and Cross Your T’s with Vince: this week, honors requirements!

1: Honors class hours, go get them! WE require 21, but every knows you can easily crack those by just taking honors versions of core classes (which I’m pretty sure a lot of kids did, my friends and I looked back at it and we already had the 21 hour requirement, as first semester sophomores)

2: Capstone. Capstone, capstone, capstone. That is certainly a thing that needs to be done. Vince seemed to stress the importance of using it as not a requirement but an advantage. Good for experience in your field.

3: Experimental learning: Apparently this is the 1800s and we need apprenticeships and that’s pretty cool. A lot of jobs kind of require things like that so that is a pretty good requirement and should help you figure out your calling more specifically and get your foot in the door at a company.

4: Experience with other languages: Well that’s an easy one for me because German counts, and I’ve got German up the wazoo. However if anyone isn’t too into language learning, there’s always study abroad and other ways to get your requirement, like maybe a penpal.

You think I’m kidding, but I’m not. Fallout 4 came out that weekend and boy oh boy Brad and Jesse were gone! Little bit of a bummer for me, because i was never that into fallout, but hey, they had fun with it.

So anyway, on this, the tenth night of Forum, we were visited by the president of the United Way (for at least Florence, she was Brad’s volunteer boss for a while) and she spoke about how as many as 2/3 of Florence's residents will be impacted by direct and indirect community service, which is pretty enheartening to hear, because it really shows how much it helps. She also talked about how she got into community service, and how initially she, like all humans, did it at first to forward her own goals, but ended up sticking around to keep helping. What a nice turn of events. She suggested a few things when it came to volunteering:

1. Baby steps: start slow, build momentum. Too much too fast can burn you out on it, and all of the sudden all your enthusiasm is gone.

2. Find something for you: Do what interests you; if it doesn’t its okay to say no, its not really helping if you don’t actually feel like you’re doing it.

The number of bowl titles for this week was overwhelming, I mean, yeah that’s kind of silly but come on guys let’s get serious. And of course I’m referring to the one forum where the speaker came in, sat on the stage and just kinda got to the point in casual clothes. Super serious. Some how it was also super boring, at least to me. There was no structure to it and it kind of bothered me, and led me to be more easily distracted by dumb jokes me and Jesse were making (we’re hoodlums, just try and stop us)

Mrs. Winters was a Florence high school teacher, and boy oh boy  she was a busy bee. Along with her workload as a teacher she volunteered at a myriad of places, and if she could do it we could too! Well, if we weren’t lazy college students with hearts of stone we could. She talked about tutoring opportunities and different things like the angel tree, which my family did actually end up doing. (Do you know how hard it is to find a generic helmet for a ten year old? It was rediculous!) I was going to try out a tutoring position but the only time i saw a flyer for one it was during one of my classes, so it kind of didn’t pan out, unfortunately.

So yeah, surprise surprise I’m a nerd who ditches class to go watch a super hero movie, oh noooooooo! Ah, well, my punishment turned out to be this guy Mr. Groce, because if my sources are to be believed (my source being brad, because Jesse went with me to Antman (join me under the bus Jesse it’s not that bad)) this speaker was one of, if not the best speaker of the semester, but I’m pretty sure Antman was still more entertaining. Go see Antman, it’s a good movie. (Marvel sponsor me please)

So, This Mr. Groce talked about leadership, and how some of the key elements of it, honest and integrity, are being severely compromised in recent times, and how that is capital B Bad.He himself ran for city council, and got himself elected without throwing garbage at his opponents. He won the way elections should be won:  a man winning by his statistics building himself, not by burying others statistics to make himself look better. (Hey remember that time I got real political? that was rad) He also spoke of keeping a good reputation for yourself, of having the ability to be trusted, because things flow a lot smoother if you can have someone tell you things and you can tell that person things and everyone is on the same page, whether its in your own life or in a business, mutual trust between employees and employers, or even just friends, makes life a lot easier, so why not start yourself, and be that first building block in the bond of trust?

The back half of my penance begins with helping small children become smart adults like our friends at the honors program. We learned from our friends at United way that the first six years of a child’s life are very important for growth; a strong base is important for any structure, and people need good bases for good growth. The Success by Six program is in place to help adults and their children or other’s children to be set up for a good educational and personal growth when they finally hit schooling age (which the school systems will probably promptly smash into the ground, but hey its a step in the right direction). The program includes things like Text4babies, a program which sends reminders to new parents and helpful tips to help them raise their child, and others like Dolly Parton’s Imagination library, which sends kids a free book each month.

Oh boy, I wonder what I’m going to rant about this time?

The speaker for this week was a realtor by the name of John Rusevlyan, and he had a thing or two to share with us, unfortunately it did not include complimentary cookies like one might find at an open house. He talked about the Rotary club, which is one of the original civic service organizations, and went on to discuss member recruitment and retention (because a little shameless self advertisement never hurt anyone, right?) and graced us with the quote: “if it’s not growing, it’s dying.” Which isn’t a bad quote, but its also a sort of very narcissistic to a point: expansion is consumptive and if done incorrectly it can lead to a faster downfall of such a community as that.

But he also talked about leadership, which is something i have kind of conflicting opinions about so here goes, I’ll discuss each of them, I guess.

1. Leaders don’t fear failure- Yeah this is a fair point but fear is a healthy thing to have: fear teaches us what to avoid, what is good and what is bad for ourselves. While yes, leaders should try to shoot high, they should also know their limits, and fear is a bit of a healthy thing.

2. Leader’s don’t fear change-Change is healthy, when taken slowly. The real trial and tribulations come from suddenly having to change drastically, so a gradual change is much better.

3. Leaders add to the equation- Well yeah, everyone should give something to the equation, otherwise, sorry bud, but you’re dead weight.

4.Leaders elevate others- again, shouldn’t this be everyone? this shouldn't be limited to the leader, and if it is you’re in a toxic situation, please spare yourself the trouble, and get out of there

5. Leaders are confident, but humble- this one is the best one, honestly. its good to have someone at the head who knows their limits but isn't afraid to test them a little. a real good person to have set goals.

Welcome to what was probably my favorite presentation of last semester, because it was actually something i was vaguely interested in. Boom, I thought i had it made, me and Jesse even whispered about maybe doing it together (saying it out loud wold have been rude, obviously). Unfortunately, we learned that during the time we had to do our mandatory hours, The room at the inn probably wouldn’t be open. i heard my little balloon audibly pop, but I’m sure that was just me; this kinda bothered me for a while, because its one thing to promote community service, like it’s good and all, but its one of those things that becomes less selfless if it’s required, you know? Instead of doing it out of the goodness of our collective hearts it becomes something for us to earn recognition for, which almost defeats the definition of volunteering and replaces it with working. And i understand that this probably just happened under circumstance and that this would encourage us to engage in civil service after our required hours were over, it rang in a sour tone with me; the first time in 4 weeks I’m presented with this cool organization that I’m totally cool with, maybe even interested in, and it won’t be around until at least a month later, and how weather in Alabama works, maybe 2 or 3? I’m very aware that my attention span isn’t that long, but at that point i just slowly started disliking forum: we usually got the same “You should volunteer because its the right thing to do” spiel then a advertisement for the speaker’s organization, and trust me, it gets old very quickly.

Oh boy, Romans, as if I hadn’t got enough of them in McKowski’s class (seriously, Romans were really hard to make die. The just kind of existed in a state of dying for about 200 years, they were persistent little buggers)

Anyway, The speaker was a certain Dr. John Lane, and he told us some surprising things about youth and volunteering: only about 25% of the population do it, and most volunteers are between 35-44 years old. Now, I may not be a 35-44 year old, but from my experience with people in that age group, they don’t really have a lot of time on their hands the way we do, especially now that we’re in college (high-schoolers might get a pass because if you’re in as little as 2 ap classes you’ve basically forfeited your free time, and that’s without counting your other classes or anything outside of school). But it bears to mind that when i was reviewing all of this, I kind of connected it to the upcoming election and the difficulty some people are having with the concept of the united states becoming a little more socialistic. Dr. Lane talked about how sometimes we go out and buy things to get ourselves a feel good feeling, but it never lasts: giving, however, generates a much longer pleasant feeling (who would have guessed?) “But Kyle,” You might ask, “What does this have to do with socialism?” Well, dear reader, I’m glad you asked: Socialism is about sharing, at least from my basic understanding of it. The principle of giving something up or giving part of something you have, be it money, time, knowledge, the likes to someone else to help them grow, survive and thrive is one of the basic structures behind community service. Breaking this down a little, you can start to make some connections because (oh gosh im posting my opinions on the internet please dont hurt me) community service and socialism share some of the same elements. the concept of universal healthcare would have citizens give up part of what they have (money to pay doctors, taken in the form of taxes) to help others survive and thrive. If we can afford to send people to other countries to help (which is, dont get me wrong, a great thing to do) can we not spend a little time here in the states, helping out ourselves?

At a 15% illeteracy rate (from a very reliable source, or friend and speaker Jim Green) Alabama is sitting at a 85 in Literacy. Guys, we live in the USA, not the USB. this isn’t tron! (but how cool would that be, without the whole dystopian thing it has going on) 

We Learned this fun fact from our speaker, who volunteers at the Northwest Alabama Reading Aides, who helps people learn to read English if they're a non-native speaker or survived a stroke, which is pretty rad if you ask me. Although his organization is kind of small, he was hoping to (and did, if what I was told was true) expand using the workforce of the honors program to expand his community-serving baby to help more people, which included a conversational English class that got set up and rolled on pretty well through out the semester. Good job, Mr. Green, you’re a real cool dude.

I wanted to start off with a shout out to the blogs I’m using as a basis  for these posts, so even though they’ll probably never read this, Brad, Graham and Jesse, thanks for posting things at a fairly regular basis and helping a brother out, and also Jordan, because i figured I’d need more than just the usual goons opinions to get a good picture.

So, to the meat of it: Our speaker for that week was Larry Softley (or sofley, or Softey? See title) and boy oh boy was this man busy. Not only is he the head of the alumni association at UNA, He’s also a deacon, a church janitor, and a grandfather! Talk about a full plate, and yet this man wanted another helping of those mashed potatoes so he plops a healthy serving of community service on there and came to tell us why.

Now I am in no place to judge, but holy crap have you looked through the feed after the semester is over? you can tell when different people kind of flipped on their “Oh no this is actually a thing i Have to do” switch. The burst of posts slowly get smaller the earlier you get into the semester, and I just thought that was a silly little thing.

So How do you write a forum post on a week that’s already hard to write a post on? Well, my friend, it’s not easy, but with the help of my good friends blog’s, I’m gonna do my damndest. Big Mamba Jamba Vince was our speaker that week, and it was basically syllabus day: we got an overview of what the class was going to be. We also got a little bit of insight from our speaker, about how through volunteering he’s met some of the best people he knows (I tried not to be offended) and how the Latin words for service and passion weren’t quite what we all expected, with passion coming from suffering and service from slave. Honestly I think service and slave were almost a coincidence if not slave just being the noun version of service because that’s kind of what a lave is, a basic servant.The passion bit rang a bit more true for me,because you often hear about people putting themselves through the wringer for  the sake of something they care about, so I think that’s pretty cool. As for what I’m passionate about, I’m kinda still figuring it out (and it may be slowly killing me inside, yaaaaay)