20 Hours for a Credit

There is a large space on every student’s resume for volunteer work: state your role, how many hours you spent there and the skills that you learned and used. There is also a space for classes at every university where service work fulfils a large chunk of class participation credit. I recently found an old diary entry of mine from the start of this semester questioning the culture of service work at universities and asking myself why I was really there.

I am rather uncertain as to what I am expecting when I walk into the organisation I have been assigned to work with by my sociology class. It’s a shelter for local families who have been unable to move into their own homes for various reasons. I have done a lot of community work in the past and on reflection, I’m ashamed that I had yet to do any at Duke. I’m even more ashamed that I’m here because a class has somewhat forced me to.

I have been at Duke University for over a year now, living in a bubble of privilege where I run, party, write for the occasional news outlet and study. I ignore everything else. I utilise Durham and what it has to offer, but I have implicitly ignored its community. Walking into this house, I feel nothing but shame.

I am greeted by two young children, Taylor and Mary*, who, without even asking who the hell I am, each grab one of my hands and ask me to play stretching games. Throughout the ninety minutes designated, we braid each other’s hair, talk about our favourite superheroes and discuss our summer adventures. The girls kept holding my hands and made me swear on my mom’s life that I will be back next week.

However, I quickly came to realise within my first session that keeping that promise wouldn’t be easy. These children are hurt and challenged every single day. The girls had a full-blown physical fight directly on top of me because Taylor spoke over Mary. I asked Mary why she was being especially naughty, to which she then told me that she had been badly bullied at school.

"He told me to fuck off”.

Mary is six.

In the last three minutes of our session, Mary asked me for my hand again, “I’m going to write both my name and your name on your hand. You can’t forget me and not come next week.”

And here lies the issue. My class requires twenty hours of rotational volunteering. Enough time for these children to become attached to us before we get our one credit and run off. Twenty hours isn’t even a full day. We can all talk about our desire to make an impact but surely one can see that this isn’t enough. Leaving, I decided to devote one more day a week to working there. I regularly complain of the stressors in my own life, but I can definitely sacrifice one sorority mixer a week for the next three years for this. Not having enough time is simply not an excuse anymore.

Yes, I want an internship. Yes, I want to win nationals and hey, I want to be popular. But Taylor told me how she also wants to improve in school and that she would really like her parents to get on better. I think it’s brilliant that my class includes community service, but I’ve come to realise that I want the work I do there to stem from a place inside me that wants to help rather than a place inside of me that wants to graduate. The girls have become the sole reason I go back every week.

Mary told me that she drove past the Monuts restaurant with her parents last week, but they haven’t taken her yet. I’m looking forward to sharing a salted caramel donut with her in the coming weeks.

Four months after I wrote this diary entry and my service class ended, I reflected. I have been going to the shelter weekly and many of the children I have worked with are now in their own homes. However, many of them still remain. Of the people who took the class with me last semester, only one still attends the shelter with me. They may have forgotten the children but the children have not forgotten them.

Spending a significant time at the same organisation for reasons beyond credits and a couple lines on a resume is incredibly rewarding, both for the children and for the part of myself that I often neglect. There is a culture at universities of using service work to appear altruistic and engaged, or to graduate with proof you’re not just another computer science major. I challenge you to try helping your community and not writing it down on your resume. I challenge you to stay there until you graduate. I challenge you to engage with the community as a person and not as student.

*names have been changed for privacy reasons

By Sophia Parvizi-Wayne

Duke Student, leader of national campaign on mental health, Cross Country All-ACC, fashion alchemist, Huffington Post writer, and all-around world-runner