This class was not at all what I expected it to be. I had no idea it was a service class, and even if I had known it wouldn’t have made a difference, since I didn’t know what a service class was. When I signed up to take Professional Writing I was a scared, second-semester freshman who was enduring some of the most exhausting, stressful, terrifying, and confusing days of his life, doubting everything he thought he knew about himself and truly wondering if he’d survive. I took Professional Writing because I had always liked writing, especially writing about music, and I thought that the class might help me discern whether or not writing was a viable career option for me (and also because it would get me out of those infernal practice rooms).
Now that we’ve completed the class, I can honestly say that I have no idea if professional writing is a viable career option for me. I really don’t think I’ve grown as a writer during this class, I still write the way I always have; I write like Sean McGibany. Who is Sean McGibany? I still don’t know.
But if we want to talk about the significance of this course and the service we did through it, things are a bit more understandable. I went to an academically and spiritually rigorous Jesuit high school in Milwaukee, WI, where one of the requirements for graduation was a certain amount of service hours, about 100 collective hours. I fulfilled this requirement at various places like nursing homes, my church, and food pantries, and I certainly grew a lot during the process. So, really, this class was more of the same for me, and I approached the service work just as apprehensively as I approached it in high school. I have a lot of social anxieties, as I’ve mentioned before, and I was nervous about working with refugees who might not be able to understand me, or me them.
That’s not to say that all of the service work I’ve ever done in my life has been horrible. Some of it has been among the most rewarding things I’ve ever done, and while I can’t say that any of the service we did during this course ranks that high, there were some very special moments. Watching a family be greeted by a swarm of friends and relatives at the airport, and me unexpectedly bonding with a refugee boy over our shared fandom for a cartoon are things that I’ll definitely remember.
Will interactive service work ever be easy for me? No. Will I continue to do it? I hope I can convince myself to do so, since stretching myself is rarely a bad thing. After taking this course, can I now help the public better understand the refugee crisis? If John Green can’t, no one can. But I do hope that in some small way I made a difference, which is the real point of service to begin with.
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