What a year... I had so many experiences, met so many new people and had a great group who put a lot of work into our project. It was an awesome year in a lot of respects.
I believe that all that I learned about working in a group will help me immensely throughout my time here at Drury. I also learned that every group or organization that you work with will not be perfect, and you have to work around the challenges.
The greatest thing I learned from living in Summit Park... would probably be how to get the smoke detector to stop beeping when we're cooking something. My roommates and I had it down to less than 30 seconds I think :)
The impact I had on the community I feel was large. Our group not only raised awareness for CARE, but we also raised almost 1000 dollars for the organization. I think that if I had not had the chance to live here, I would not have been so involved at Drury and met so many awesome people. This year would have been more relaxing, but not as memorable. I have learned a lot from volunteering at CARE and being involved in putting on fundraisers.
If I could change something that happened this past year, I would have just started out with three people. Having someone who did not actually want to be here for the first half of the year really slowed us down and was a major stumbling block mid-year when she left. After we had that experience, we were able to do so much this semester. I wish that we had just started out with a dedicated team and never had to deal with the drama of someone leaving.
Advice to future Summit Groups:
PICK YOUR TEAM CAREFULLY!!!
Make sure that you can both LIVE and WORK with the people you choose. If someone in your group is not 100% sure they are ready to take on a project like this, then save yourself some trouble and pick someone else. You'll be glad you did.
All in all, even though there were some bumps in the road, I am soooo glad that I was able to have this oppurtunity. Thank you Drury!!
-Anna
Monday, May 9, 2011
Friday, May 6, 2011
May Summit at a Close
Hello everyone,
The Summit Park experience was exciting, new, and invigorating!
An aspect that will be beneficial to have as I continue my journey through my remaining two years at Drury is that I am better able to work in a group setting. I now understand that I can not do it all and I need to trust other people with tasks. This has helped me in SGA as well. Since I am the VP of a committee and I need to trust other people in completing tasks on time and done well.
The best thing I learned in Summit Park is in a way bitter sweet. Friends are not always really what they seem. People lie and back-stab all of the time. I found this out multiple ways this year. However by saying this I do not mean that I had a bad time in Summit Park, just now I know to not trust people off the bat, but I need to fully get to know someone before I jump in to living with someone.
I think that I have made an impact on my community and on the agency we worked with this year. I impacted the community by showing people that being engaged is fun. We were dedicated this semester to trying to do cute and simple ways to get C.A.R.E.'s name out there and raise some money for them. Also I think more people at Drury and in the Springfield area know about C.A.R.E. and what they stand for. I know this because everywhere I went I told people about C.A.R.E. and what they stand for. If someone was looking for a pet I would tell them were to go. I know I impacted the community through these reasons.
I impacted the agency as well. I know this because CARE is a non-profit organization and all the money they receive goes to helping a homeless dog or cat. There are many costs that go into housing, feeding, and catering to the medical needs for the animals at CARE. Therefore, throughout the year, we have raised a little under 1000 dollars for our organization. Thus we have made a large financial impact on the agency.
If I did not get a chance to live in Summit Park I do not think I would have met many of the people I live around. I would not have got to know the people at CARE and would not been able to spread the word around about their awesome program. There were ups and downs, highs and lows. But if I never lived here I never would have had one of the best years of my life. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to do so.
I would have changed the amount of work we did for the organization the first semester. I just don't think that we were expecting the extensive amount of time that it took to complete all of the tasks that we had planned. It makes me wonder just how much more money we could have handed over to CARE if we had been more dedicated in the fall semester. Maybe we could have not been a little under 1000 dollars but a little over!
ADVICE: Make a connection with your organization...they will appreciate you more and will give you more help. In addition to this you will enjoy and get more out of the experience if you do!
HAVE A NICE SUMMER!
-Sarah Nemeth
The Summit Park experience was exciting, new, and invigorating!
An aspect that will be beneficial to have as I continue my journey through my remaining two years at Drury is that I am better able to work in a group setting. I now understand that I can not do it all and I need to trust other people with tasks. This has helped me in SGA as well. Since I am the VP of a committee and I need to trust other people in completing tasks on time and done well.
The best thing I learned in Summit Park is in a way bitter sweet. Friends are not always really what they seem. People lie and back-stab all of the time. I found this out multiple ways this year. However by saying this I do not mean that I had a bad time in Summit Park, just now I know to not trust people off the bat, but I need to fully get to know someone before I jump in to living with someone.
I think that I have made an impact on my community and on the agency we worked with this year. I impacted the community by showing people that being engaged is fun. We were dedicated this semester to trying to do cute and simple ways to get C.A.R.E.'s name out there and raise some money for them. Also I think more people at Drury and in the Springfield area know about C.A.R.E. and what they stand for. I know this because everywhere I went I told people about C.A.R.E. and what they stand for. If someone was looking for a pet I would tell them were to go. I know I impacted the community through these reasons.
I impacted the agency as well. I know this because CARE is a non-profit organization and all the money they receive goes to helping a homeless dog or cat. There are many costs that go into housing, feeding, and catering to the medical needs for the animals at CARE. Therefore, throughout the year, we have raised a little under 1000 dollars for our organization. Thus we have made a large financial impact on the agency.
If I did not get a chance to live in Summit Park I do not think I would have met many of the people I live around. I would not have got to know the people at CARE and would not been able to spread the word around about their awesome program. There were ups and downs, highs and lows. But if I never lived here I never would have had one of the best years of my life. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to do so.
I would have changed the amount of work we did for the organization the first semester. I just don't think that we were expecting the extensive amount of time that it took to complete all of the tasks that we had planned. It makes me wonder just how much more money we could have handed over to CARE if we had been more dedicated in the fall semester. Maybe we could have not been a little under 1000 dollars but a little over!
ADVICE: Make a connection with your organization...they will appreciate you more and will give you more help. In addition to this you will enjoy and get more out of the experience if you do!
HAVE A NICE SUMMER!
-Sarah Nemeth
What a Year
Our Summit Experience has been a good, interesting opportunity. I've learned a few things that will benefit me as I continue my time at Drury. One is that you have to plan early to get anything done on time if you have to go through the University to do something. Another is you have to manage your time very well. Also, spreading news by word of mouth is the best way to advertise what you are doing. The greatest thing I learned from living in Summit was how to control my additude. It may sound funny, but, as my mother would tell you, I've always had an additude problem and living with two or three other girls with their own additudes made me much more aware of mine. I feel like we raised awareness of C.A.R.E. on Drury campus, but not as much as we would have liked. We helped C.A.R.E. raise awareness for themselves in the rest of the community, though. We made a connection between C.A.R.E. and Drury that will hopefully continue on. There is already a Summit group next year working with C.A.R.E., and hopefully C.A.R.E. will become an organization that people choose for Summit every year. If I had not lived in Summit my experience at Drury probably would have been much different. I probably would have lived in college park. Not that college park is bad, Summit is just a luxury. I lived in Sunderland and Summit so now I don't want to "down grade" to the other campus housing. If I had had to live in college park this year I would not mind so bad (hopefully). Summit is just so separated from the rest of housing. We only see people who live in Summit or who live further down the street. Nobody else ventures this way. I like that. Looking back over the past year, I definitely would have some things differently. I would have planned and started advertising our events much further ahead of time for sure. I also would have liked to have gotten more into the Springfield community as a whole, instead of mainly the Drury community.
To future Summit groups, listen up! Choose your groups well! Make sure every group member puts everything on the table before you even start this process. Not only are you working on a year-long project with this group, you're also living together, which is much harder than it sounds. We lost one of our group members because she decided she really didn't like us that much and never said anything about it. She was one of our best friends and we never saw it coming. Believe me, you don't want to go through that. Personally, I think four people groups are much easier to handle than eight people groups. You have to be able to talk about your project often and it's hard to get eight people with different schedules together at once. Make sure you choose an organization that you can be committed to. Summit can be a pain in the rear when you have a full schedule, you're involved in other organizations, you're trying to get all your volunteer hours in and any events you have planned. If you're really committed to your organization it reminds you that you're not just wasting your time.
It has been a great experience. Good luck to next year's groups. Especially C.A.R.E., I hope you do great things.
Sarah Nemeth and Anna Yendes were great partners. They both brought something different to the mix.
Thank you Andrew Wiemer, for the experience, the help, everything.
~Josie Yost
To future Summit groups, listen up! Choose your groups well! Make sure every group member puts everything on the table before you even start this process. Not only are you working on a year-long project with this group, you're also living together, which is much harder than it sounds. We lost one of our group members because she decided she really didn't like us that much and never said anything about it. She was one of our best friends and we never saw it coming. Believe me, you don't want to go through that. Personally, I think four people groups are much easier to handle than eight people groups. You have to be able to talk about your project often and it's hard to get eight people with different schedules together at once. Make sure you choose an organization that you can be committed to. Summit can be a pain in the rear when you have a full schedule, you're involved in other organizations, you're trying to get all your volunteer hours in and any events you have planned. If you're really committed to your organization it reminds you that you're not just wasting your time.
It has been a great experience. Good luck to next year's groups. Especially C.A.R.E., I hope you do great things.
Sarah Nemeth and Anna Yendes were great partners. They both brought something different to the mix.
Thank you Andrew Wiemer, for the experience, the help, everything.
~Josie Yost
Saturday, April 30, 2011
April!
Hello everyone, I've been putting off writing my blog post, but better late than never!
This was the last full month of the semester, and I feel that our group has accomplished a lot for CARE. We have accomplished everything that we set out to do this semester, and we completed our last planned event for the year earlier this month.
As many people saw, we sold goodie bags for CARE this month in front of the FSC. We even had a staff person, Traci, from CARE come and participate in the fundraising. She brought a dog from CARE and it was a good time. I think we definitely raised some awareness for CARE through out campus.
The most difficult thing about volunteering with CARE is that we havent been able to have regular, scheduled volunteer hours, so its been hard to get all our hours in. Nevertheless, we have succeeded in raising close to $1000 for CARE this year, and we are all content with how our project turned out.
We don't really have another event scheduled, because it's the end of the year and everyone is busy with finals. But we are going to pass out flyers for a CARE event in July, and I plan to continue volunteering there through out the summer.
This was the last full month of the semester, and I feel that our group has accomplished a lot for CARE. We have accomplished everything that we set out to do this semester, and we completed our last planned event for the year earlier this month.
As many people saw, we sold goodie bags for CARE this month in front of the FSC. We even had a staff person, Traci, from CARE come and participate in the fundraising. She brought a dog from CARE and it was a good time. I think we definitely raised some awareness for CARE through out campus.
The most difficult thing about volunteering with CARE is that we havent been able to have regular, scheduled volunteer hours, so its been hard to get all our hours in. Nevertheless, we have succeeded in raising close to $1000 for CARE this year, and we are all content with how our project turned out.
We don't really have another event scheduled, because it's the end of the year and everyone is busy with finals. But we are going to pass out flyers for a CARE event in July, and I plan to continue volunteering there through out the summer.
Friday, April 15, 2011
April Showers...
Time is flying!! Spring semester has been so busy for all us, school-wise and with C.A.R.E.!! This semester we have done a lot of smaller fundraisers that have brought lots more publicity and money in for C.A.R.E. February we made bracelets, which brought in almost $100! March we made dog treats that we gave straight to C.A.R.E. instead of selling, but they were still a great hit. This month we made goodie bags, which we made more than $50 from! We even had Traci from C.A.R.E. bring one of the dogs to campus. Her name was Penny and she was so loveable. People came by multiple times just for some animal therapy. Unfortuantely this was our last event for our project. We do plan to advertise for one of C.A.R.E.'s biggest events, Hogs for Dogs, sponsored by Harley Davidson.This event will be on July 10th and, although we personally may not be working the event, we hope that anyone who is still in Springfield will go out and support C.A.R.E.!
Personally, I feel our greatest accomplishment this month was actually getting one of the dogs to campus. I feel that it really brought to life for the community what we are trying to do for these animals.
Our greatest challenge this semester has been actually getting into the shelter to volunteer. We made up for this in other ways, but it's nice to be there every couple weeks to see who has been adopted, who's still there, and it just makes me feel more in touch with our organization.
Personally, I feel our greatest accomplishment this month was actually getting one of the dogs to campus. I feel that it really brought to life for the community what we are trying to do for these animals.
Our greatest challenge this semester has been actually getting into the shelter to volunteer. We made up for this in other ways, but it's nice to be there every couple weeks to see who has been adopted, who's still there, and it just makes me feel more in touch with our organization.
Hey this is Sarah's post for April
Hello Everyone,
My blogger account is not working so I am under Josie's name.
Our organization has been difficult to work with this semester. They never return phone calls and they never schedule us for volunteering opportunities, until the last minute usually during the day when I have class. Therefore, this has been the most challenging experience I have had with CARE.
Our last event was completed yesterday. We sold goodie bags in front of the commons on Tuesday and Thursday. It was a really good time and we made a lot of money for CARE. Actually up to date I think we have made almost 1000 for the organization so far. The last thing we are doing for our project this year is spread around fliers for a summer event CARE is involved in. This event is the Harley Davidson event. I will be around this summer so I am for sure going to check it out.
WE HAD A DOG ON THURSDAY!!! We had been trying to get a dog to be there during our last event and we finally succeeded. YAY!!!!
This semester we have done everything that we had originally planned to do. The only thing that is lacking this semester is getting volunteer hours. Other than that we are staying strong and I truly believe that we are helping CARE become a stronger organization. This is because we are giving them free PR and we are fundraising for them as well.
-Thank you, Sarah Nemeth
My blogger account is not working so I am under Josie's name.
Our organization has been difficult to work with this semester. They never return phone calls and they never schedule us for volunteering opportunities, until the last minute usually during the day when I have class. Therefore, this has been the most challenging experience I have had with CARE.
Our last event was completed yesterday. We sold goodie bags in front of the commons on Tuesday and Thursday. It was a really good time and we made a lot of money for CARE. Actually up to date I think we have made almost 1000 for the organization so far. The last thing we are doing for our project this year is spread around fliers for a summer event CARE is involved in. This event is the Harley Davidson event. I will be around this summer so I am for sure going to check it out.
WE HAD A DOG ON THURSDAY!!! We had been trying to get a dog to be there during our last event and we finally succeeded. YAY!!!!
This semester we have done everything that we had originally planned to do. The only thing that is lacking this semester is getting volunteer hours. Other than that we are staying strong and I truly believe that we are helping CARE become a stronger organization. This is because we are giving them free PR and we are fundraising for them as well.
-Thank you, Sarah Nemeth
Friday, March 11, 2011
March!!
Nice weather is becoming more regular! This is great news for C.A.R.E. More people will be out looking for new companions. Hopefully we will start having mobile adoptions soon! Those are some of the best ways to raise awareness for C.A.R.E. People actually stop to see the animals and ask questions about the facility. We are starting to get a few more hours to volunteer. They have had so many volunteers that we haven't gotten in much, but that is good for C.A.R.E.! We will be making dog treats this weekend and we hope they are a great success!!
Spring time!
Hello everyone! Spring break is almost here and I am ready to get this next week over with! Also, it is extremely beautiful outside and I don't want to be in class tonight :(
Since we didn't have any questions for our blog this time, I'm just going to fill you in on what we've been up to with CARE.
I've volunteered at CARE 6 hours so far, and that number will surely go up when the weather becomes nice and mobile adoptions are more common. So far when I've gone, Ive just been walking dogs and playing with the cats. Last two times that I've been there, there were a ton of a
Austrailian sheperd mix puppies that were 10 weeks old. SO CUTE! They were so soft and just wanted to sit on our laps and cuddle. There were a wide variety of dogs there also. I volunteered on tuesday and had to walk dogs in the rain and mud. It was miserable, but also fun :) all the dogs were so glad for some attention and loving, they didn't want to go back inside after playing for a while. I was definitely covered in mud when I returned to drury.
As for the project aspect of our volunteering, this month we are baking dog treats to take to CARE and give to the dogs. We just wanted to spend a little time bonding with the animals and staff, and do something kind of fun during these midterms.
Hopefully this month and spring break are amazing :) Have a great springbreak!!
Since we didn't have any questions for our blog this time, I'm just going to fill you in on what we've been up to with CARE.
I've volunteered at CARE 6 hours so far, and that number will surely go up when the weather becomes nice and mobile adoptions are more common. So far when I've gone, Ive just been walking dogs and playing with the cats. Last two times that I've been there, there were a ton of a
Austrailian sheperd mix puppies that were 10 weeks old. SO CUTE! They were so soft and just wanted to sit on our laps and cuddle. There were a wide variety of dogs there also. I volunteered on tuesday and had to walk dogs in the rain and mud. It was miserable, but also fun :) all the dogs were so glad for some attention and loving, they didn't want to go back inside after playing for a while. I was definitely covered in mud when I returned to drury.
As for the project aspect of our volunteering, this month we are baking dog treats to take to CARE and give to the dogs. We just wanted to spend a little time bonding with the animals and staff, and do something kind of fun during these midterms.
Hopefully this month and spring break are amazing :) Have a great springbreak!!
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