My day began a little later than I am used to, as I was able to sleep in until 7:45. (Sadly, that is sleeping in for me these days..) After I got motivated, dressed, and ate breakfast, I was out the door, and headed over to the house we would be working on for the day. At this point, I was simply performing my six hours of community service so that I would only have to write a 2-3 page final paper for my Comp II class. That was my main motivation. I was interested to see how my day would unfold. I knew that what I was about to do would be a big help to the resident, but I still was mostly doing it because of my class.
I arrived at the house around 9:00 AM, when I signed in and began to size up the situation. The first thing I noticed about the house was its crumbling paint, overgrown trees, and the junked up front porch. It made me sad to see the house, because I could only imagine what it looked like in its prime. However, I kept the faith, and waited to see what would come. I recognized a few faces from my class, as well as a good friend of mine from PLC, which made the situation much better with a few familiar faces.
After our house captain, Steve, arrived, he began delegating tasks, leaving the vast majority of us to scrape paint from the sides of the house. I have never scraped paint at any point in my life; naturally, this changed on that day. I am now a paint scraping pro, as I helped to scrape the better part of this house. When everyone began scraping, I was greeted by the cacophony that accompanies the scraping, a sound that is much akin to nails on a chalkboard or plastic silverware rubbing together. However, I pulled it together and dealt with it, and eventually, it wasn't that bad. For liability purposes (I'm sure), each of us was given a dust mask, and those of us with contacts were given safety glasses, in the event that the paint we were scraping was lead-based. We were all quite the fashion statement, with our ratty clothes and shoes, and our face/eye mask get-up. Thankfully, we weren't in it for the fashion portion. As we scraped, everyone made small talk, as is usual when working alongside other people.
As some of us scraped, everyone else in our group, mostly the adult sponsors, began trimming tree branches and doing some yardwork and minor carpentry. It took about two hours, but we were finally able to begin priming the house. Our primer was dished out to us in Halloween and Easter buckets, which I found both resourceful and funny. We were told to find someone to share a bucket with and commence priming. I made company with a 13-year-old girl who was in the eighth grade and whose dad was our house captain. I had a nice chat with her, although I mostly asked questions and listened to her, which was fine by me.
After a while, one side of the house was done, and we progressed to the front porch. While there, I met two nursing students from the Stillwater campus who were there to fulfill a community service requirement. I chatted with both of them, and learned about their lives. One lady was a former English teacher and basketball coach, with all but one child out of high school. Another lady emigrated from India, and her husband is an engineering professor at OSU. She also has a two-year-old daughter. Both women were incredibly nice, and I enjoyed talking with both of them.
Eventually, we progressed to the third side of the house, and I chatted more extensively with the lady from India. We compared notes on our lives, and just had a nice talk, in general. We saw that most of the work had already been done on that side, and we headed back to the original side to take a water break, and wait for our lunch to arrive. After sitting for so long, we were told that we needed to work for a little while longer or else we wouldn't finish in time. Also, it would be a little while until our lunch was delivered. I was already getting tired by this point, and my feet were beginning to ache a little bit, but I plugged on, and began painting the underside of the eave, a task which had to be done atop a ladder. The best word I can think of to describe my ladder was rickety, but I don't think that word quite does it justice. Needless to say, I found a friend from my Astronomy class who was willing to hold the ladder for me as I continually climbed up and down the ladder and painted overhead. During this process, we both managed to get quite a bit of paint on ourselves, and I think I still have a little bit of paint in my hair from this time. Shortly after we got started, our lunch arrived! There was a longer line to get some pizza, so I decided to finish painting my little area before I got down and ate some lunch.
After the lunch break, I felt a little bit invigorated, although I was steadily fatiguing. I got back up on the ladder and painted once more. I basically painted the entire eave of the south side of the house, which isn't saying much, but most definitely isn't saying nothing. Lucky for me, there was someone else doing the same thing as me on the opposite side of the house, so I was pretty well done with my job when I finished that side. I did a few other things, but it wasn't long after that my Comp professor, Dr. Bowers, came up to me and another guy from my class, and declared that we had completely earned the right to write our 2-3 page paper, and that we were free to go at any point. (This was at 3:00 PM, by the way.)
I considered staying for a few more minutes, but eventually decided to go ahead and leave, as there really wasn't much left to do, and what was left to do was already being done by someone else, so I decided to go ahead and come home.
When I finally got home, (and I mean home on the farm-home) I was beat. I chatted with my mom for a short while and ate a small snack, and then I took a much-needed nap. I didn't sleep too terribly long, but I felt refreshed after my nap.
In hindsight, I feel really good about what I did at the house. The residents were obviously unable to do all of the maintenence work, and we were able to pitch in and spruce up the house. The house now looks 100% better, and it is all thanks to the work we did. It was a fulfilling project, and I am fairly certain that I will participate in it next year, just because I can. I learned that I myself am capable of doing more than I thought I was, and that sometimes, you don't necessarily have to take on a huge role to make a difference in the community. Sometimes, changing the community is as simple as standing on a ladder with a bucket of paint, painting the eaves of a run-down house. Everyone is capable of contributing to a small change in their communities, you don't have to have a famous name or lots of money; you just have to want to do it. This project also taught me a little bit of humility, realizing that a run-down house is more than just that, and I am glad that I participated!
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