Service Doesn't Mean Becoming a Superhero

The real smoke-free superheroes!

We're halfway through the semester, and I haven't really had much to do with my service learning organization. There just hasn’t been much going on in the smoke-free scene. What little I have done, hasn’t had anything to do with Kentucky Center for Smoke-free Policy’s mission of promoting a smoke-free tomorrow. Most of our service will be completed next month. November is national lung cancer awareness month and the third Thursday is designated as the Great American Smokeout.  Starting soon the organization will need us to table and hand out pamphlets on campus in between class and create social media campaigns for their facebook and twitter handles. So it was with this assurance of future helpfulness that I went into my service this past month.

For two hours I went to the Kentucky Center for Smoke-free Policy office and scanned papers. They are trying to update the file system from paper to digital, and that’s a lot of work! It’s a lot of boring work- standing at the massive, 20-in-1, industrial Xerox machines feeding papers through, pausing of course every five or so pages to unjam the machine when a document inevitably didn’t feed correctly. It was mindless and tedious and more than a little frustrating at times. Honestly, it didn’t feel like the real, life-changing service I had hoped for when beginning this endeavor.  But when my scheduled time was finished and I came to get my hours sheet signed by my supervisor, everyone was so grateful. I felt like Clark Kent, unnoticed and rather superfluous, but they thanked me like I had just saved the day, Superman style. They thanked me for saving them hours of work and hassle. In my two hours I made their lives at least a little easier. And that’s the point, isn’t it?

my new nemesis 

Sometimes, the most helpful things are the simplest things. Serving my service learning organization sometimes means filing papers and scanning documents. Service can’t always be leading a single-handed crusade against the evils of the world. It can’t always be great and exciting and important-sounding. Honestly, my standing back and doing the boring work to allow the experts to work on plans for the coming month, was likely the best thing I could do. Learning to serve means learning that you don’t always get to wear the cape- the most helpful tasks are the mundane, the boring, the unheroic. And completing these tasks joyfully is the best thing that I can do for the Kentucky Center for Smoke-free Policy.