Week 12: Eating a Delicious Coconut Truffle and Writing Poetry About Accounting

Alrighty roosky. last blog post; let's get to it:
Last week Dr. Barry Morris came and visited us to tell us about wise investing and how that can possibly tie into civic engagement. Generally I'm skeptical about people other than my padre giving me economic advice, however, this guy has a Ph.D. and spent 35 years in the economics department here at UNA, so I was willing to listen.

I like money you see...I'm a penny pincher; I want to have a lot of money some day so I can worry about one less thing in life...So I listened :-)

Dr. Morris started off by telling us that when it comes to finances and civic service. Basically the government (federal and state) needs to be mutually and fiscally strong in order to help others. I can understand that from a financial point of view; but it also holds true to cases of morality. Generally a dedicated server should set an example as a morally strong person, who serves for the right reasons. With this idea in mind, he went on to talk to us about how to go about serving. The key, he explains, is to "begin with the end in mind." There are 23 boards in this city; if you were to step into any one of these board meetings, you would find that everyone has some sort of goal in mind set. Once the goals are set, then we can work to how we want to attain it, and if the government is mutually and fiscally strong, then that shouldn't be a problem, right?

Finals week is metaphorically smashing my head in with a rock. I hope this final post is substantial. It's more boring than my others probably...Don't worry I'll have a video (or two) at the end I want to show you!

I miss Stokehold.

On to this cool little handout Dr. Morris gave us. The contents of this handout revealed how to be a millionaire without winning the lottery. See that second paragraph up there? The one where it says "I like money you see?" I like the theory behind this handout by relation. It starts off with the advice to not put money in to a new car after college. Assuming a student were to pay 25,000 dollars (a little steep for a college grad if you ask me, but I'll go with it for this example), you could potentially invest that 25,000 and build it into 2 million...That sounds nice for someone with not 2 million to put to his name. Then make a budget. This ties into begin with the end in mind. What do you want? I want to invest responsibly so I can continue to live a comfortable lifestyle. That's definitely something worth working for. Taking advantage of 401K and IRA are responsible budget managing tasks. Then have a cash reserve for emergencies; again, begin with the end in mind.

The big thing to understand is that we don't have to get everything ready now; we can manage it throughout our lives. I'm not expecting to be living the same lifestyle I have been blessed with under my parents' care. But I'm confident that I can work to get that for myself

Alright now that I'm done watch my new commercials for the hot new men's cologne, Chartreuse Gi'deuche!
Bye bye.

Week 11: Yeah I'm Doing This on Thanksgiving

Well technically I'm blogging on Black Friday since it's 1 in the morning now, but yeah I'm doing work on Thanksgiving; someone should give me a dedication medal. I have way too much on my plate right now and little motivation to start anything, so I'm taking this one step at a time. The easiest thing I can do right now is tell you about this past Monday's speaker, Tom Osbourne--the emeritus civic engagement deacon guy.

I was on the fence about the content of this, well for lack of a better word "informal lecture." Basically he talked to us about the same ideals we've been discussing all semester from a different perspective. Dr. Osbourne first addressed the idea of reluctance to us when it comes to civic service. He told us that he had been pushed into doing volunteer work his whole life, which goes to show you that reluctance to do community service is human nature. He told us that we won't lose the reluctance, but if we volunteer enough we can learn to overcome it. I can believe that.

Here's where I started to diverge. Dr. Osbourne is/was a deacon of an Episcopal church; their job is to serve as a mediator between the church and the rest of the world. One way he fulfills this job is by doing prison ministry (the name of the program is called Kairos [which means special time]). In this prison ministry program the ministry spend three days with prisoners and nurture them. Dr. Osbourne labels he and his ministry buddies "Kairos Junkies" because of the rush and transformation they get from the experience.

Here's my problem; I heard way too much emphasis being put on how great the server feels when performing service. I don't really want to hear that. I'd much rather hear emphasis on how those being served feel. With the theme of Thanksgiving in mind I feel right now that I have so much to be thankful for already. I don't wish to flip the idea of community service to an angle which puts my own personal gain at the forefront. I like the idea of performing community service because it fulfills something in others, no matter how small that may be, because that seems much more significant than what I get out of it. It's kind of a humility-themed profession.

Anyways that's my spiel. I didn't know spiel was an actual word, but I'm not getting the red squiggly underline that misspelled words get on word documents. Cool.

Here's something I made....watch it

Bye Bye.

Week 10: Things Blur Together

I was told once that when you study something from multiple sources to the point where everything starts to sound exactly the same, only then have you fully educated yourself. So ten weeks of honors forum have passed and things are starting to blur together.

Of course it's not like I haven't been educated on things such as community service and its significance in the past; I'm just noting key concepts that each speaker is telling me week after week. Having said that let me tell you what Immediate Past President of Rotary Club John Rusevlyan talked about last Monday.

The first thing he pointed out was that he did not yell at us. I don't remember the context of that comment exactly, but it was the first thing I wrote down in my notes. I guess that means he's a nice guy. He talked a little bit about colleges transitioning into Division 1, and how it results in higher expectations all across the board (whether that be in academia, athletics, and community service). Yes community service is important (1st concept that's blurring together).

I went to Einstein Bros. to get a cup of soup and they were out. I was very upset. I think this was fate reminding me that I should finish my volunteer hours...perhaps I could work at a soup kitchen.

So Mr. Rusevlyan then went on to talk about Rotary Club; It was started in 1905 by Paul Harris. He created it so men could gather for fellowship, and thus the world's first service club was born. Today there are over 33,000 clubs in over 200 countries. The club's responsibilities include sustaining and increasing membership, participating in service projects, supporting the rotary foundation financially, and developing leaders capable of serving beyond club level. The object of Rotary is to encourage success, high ethical standards in professions, application of service ideals in personal business and community life, and the advancement of international understanding, goodwill, and peace (everybody get along and better themselves = 2nd concept that's blurring together)

The local Rotary club here in the Shoals area are investing in a project called Shoals Scholar Dollars, where every high school student in Colbert/Lauderdale County with a 2.5 GPA and a sunny disposition get 2 years of paid tuition at Northwest Shoals Community College. I think they should raise that GPA personally if they want to achieve something like that, maybe at least to 3.0 Oh well.

The last thing Mr. Rusevlyan told us was to answer 4 questions before we thing, say, or do anything.
1) Is it true?
2) Is it fair?
3) Will it build goodwill and friendships?
4) Is it beneficial to all concerned?

One thing I've learned is that you can't always answer those four questions they way they should ideally be answered. But that's life

TWELVE FOOT NINJA'S NEW ALBUM CAME OUT!! :-D

Bye Bye.

 

Week 9: My Left Arm is Falling Asleep

So basically the entire left side of my body is in a state of complete physical discomfort. I'm in desperate need of a nap. I think I'm just going to sleep all through Thanksgiving; I deserve it for being such a hard worker and whatnot.

But there is still much work to be done before the holidays next week, so no sleep for me.

The Honors program was visited by Dr. Vince Brewton last Monday to discuss the Red Cross. Now Dr. Vince Brewton is not in charge of this Red Cross organization; however he is in charge of the ever-so illustrious Honors program, so I trusted his word on the subject. Anyways, he told us that the Red Cross is pretty much the jack-of-all trades organization for disaster relief, charity, and health related causes. Currently they are busy with Hurricane Sandy clean up efforts. I just found out that you can change the font on this. The Red cross arrives on the scene of a disaster and writes checks for people who need to stay in hotels if their homes were destroyed. Isn't that cool? That's a very nice thing for an organization to do I would say.

I need to step back a minute and explain why it was Dr. Brewton who talked about the Red Cross instead of an assigned speaker. Basically she had to reschedule. My memory is a bit fuzzy on the details of the beginning of this conversation but I believe that her absence led Dr. Brewton into addressing the question, "why do selfish people quit their volunteer jobs?" Just from typing that I realize that there's a big gap in the connection between the Red Cross speaker not showing up and the addressing of aforementioned question.
But the answer to that question was simple enough: High work rate and low pay rate. The moral of that story is that you shouldn't be a selfish person in a selfless organization. Hang in there even if the work rate sucks, because selfless organizations strive to make a difference for the betterment of a local or global area; they don't exist for the sole purpose of giving you a good resume.

You wanna watch a video about caring? Let's see if I can find one. I need a little break from typing because my left arm is still in discomfort

This is what happens when you are selfish....people get angry, simple as that.
In this video the selfish fish (or rather the selFISH) saw in the pocket of the tea party coordinator something that could benefit the whole tea party. However, The tea party coordinator refused to just let the selfish partake in the juicy fruit. Everyone else in the tea party need Juicy Fruit too (even though the rest of the party have yet to show up in need of delicious chewing gum) The point I'm making is that there is no room for selfishness in volunteer work.

Last fun fact I'm going to post about Red Cross before I sign off. The Red Cross has different names based on where they are in the world to account for other religions. They are also known as the Red Crescent (Islam) and the Red Diamond (Judaism). Cool huh?

I need to get some volunteer hours too. I'm off to find out where I'm going to go do that.

Bye bye.

  

Week 8: Something Actually Piqued My Interest

So honors forum finally had a guest speaker that talked about a form of civil service I was interested in. I addressed Heritage and the Main Street volunteer groups in my first week of bloggery, and after listening to our last week's speaker, Bradley Dean, I realized those might not necessarily tie into the platform I had in mind. However, I thought of something I could do in relation to my platform that Mr. Dean mentioned. I'll get to that in a minute, but here's pretty much the content of the class.

My girlfriend is gorgeous. You should be jealous.

That wasn't part of the lecture, it's just a personal observation. Anyways Bradley Dean is the art and digital design director at Billy Reid. He received an education at UNA with a major in art and a minor in entrepreneurship (my recently declared minor). One piece of advice that he gave us was to take the extra steps needed to be exceptional in your career. An education is always a benefit, but taking the time to learn new things on your own that aren't taught in a classroom. That way you can be unique in your career path. Billy Reid has been a success as far as being unique goes; everything is controlled from Florence: The warehouse, the customer service, the shipping, design, etc. It's all done in Florence. Billy Reid is also taking that step into being unique by trying to make shirts from organic cotton (by that I mean none of the process of making the t-shirts involves anything artificial). By being unique we can make changes to where we live. So how do we go about doing that?

First we can make changes to where we live through work. That refers back to the organic cotton processing. Second, we can change where we live through social interactions outside of work. That means civic service. Keeping a watchful eye on the things that go on around the town you live in and guiding the direction of the town in a responsible way is what we can do to make an impact.

Back to my new idea for platform related community service

So I like music. Who doesn't right? Anyways Bradley Dean got to mentioning the music committee on First Fridays...I got to thinking that volunteering for that could be my contribution to the community that would be related to my platform. Also I got to thinking that a photography or video related internship at Billy Reid would be the cat's pajamas, as the saying goes. Just a thought anyways.

Time to sleep.

Week 7: Cliques

So I'm typing this sentence on a Monday at 7:36 p.m. I got out of Honors Forum 46 minutes ago...47 minutes ago now. Basically I just spent 50 minutes of my life listening to someone talk up a volunteer program that I can't even be a part of; I can't be a part of this program because I'm a guy, but even if I wasn't a guy, I could only get into the program if I was invited to join by a member. This program that I'm speaking of is The Association of Junior Leagues International, Inc. Our speaker tonight was a current sustaining member of AJLI, Leslie Tomlinson (I think that's how you spell it).

Basically I learned that the League was started up by a New York debutante named Mary Harriman in 1901. By 1921, there were 30 groups of young women across the US whose goals were to provide support, guidance, and leadership development opportunities. However, there were limitations to who could be allowed into the Junior League. The same thing happened today. I heard someone joking right after class saying it seemed like an out-of-college sorority. Today there are 293 Leagues across the US, Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom, with over 155,000 members. The Junior League strives to promote volunteerism, develop the potential  of women, and improve communities. In reality they address the critical needs of a community, meet women where they are as it relates to their volunteer opportunities, and they network. Hmm.. I think it's time to post a video

However, I did find something of use in this class. I discovered that networking is a recurring theme when it comes to community service. Local networking is a great start because it can stretch out to larger networking between states, and can eventually become global. The Junior League is in a major transformation today, with over 7,000 volunteer hours in the last year and over $60,000 distributed to 30 plus Shoals area agencies. I've been practicing networking a little bit by introducing myself to some speakers and people that I have an interest in as far as community service goes.

That's pretty much all that I have to say for this blog. Time for some WoW (World of Wings, not Warcraft).

Week 6: How to Preserve History

As the title for this week's blog implies, I have recently discovered the way I shall use volunteerism to fulfill my platform of preserving culture/history. A couple of days ago I filled out a volunteer application to work at the library in downtown Florence. I see two ways I can preserve history at the library: first, all books are documents of history; second, I recently talked to someone about starting a video production program at the library maybe next semester. I think that teaching kids about video production would be a good way to volunteer my time at the library that could teach future filmmakers how to preserve history (through video of course).

Moving on to last week's speaker, the Honors Forum was visited by Mr. Jackie Hendrix, the chairman of the Shoals Chamber of Commerce. I'll admit I was going through one of those "who am I?" crises that young adults go through so I was a bit spaced out during his address to the class, but I took some good notes regardless. The idea that he brought to our attention most throughout his speech though was to get out in the community and NETWORK. See how I put that in bold? That's because it's an important thing to do. Networking involves getting out into the community and making connections with people. Depending on which kinds of people you network with, this can help you get jobs or improve a resume. Mr. Hendrix also made us aware of something called the 80/20 rule. It states that 20% of people involved in something do 80% of the work. Getting involved in community service and being a major contributor to that service is very important as well. So the next question that was brought up was, "How do we make time to get involved?"

Mr. Hendrix's answer to that was to not have children; Okay I'm on that boat with him, but I also have many school affiliated things that I'm involved with on top of 18 hours of class this semester. Fortunately the library that I signed up to volunteer for works around my schedule. This speaker reiterated what all the other speakers told us about civil service--that it's the socially responsible thing to do.

Networking can also help find commonalities and raise a level of comfort among persons in the community. However, becoming too comfortable with someone may lead to a bias known as Peter's Principle; Peter's principle entails the promotion of a likable person to the level of incompetence. We need to watch out for that when networking.

The last piece of advice Mr. Hendrix gave to us was to "keep showing up to the party." Basically don't give up or quit your civic service.

Time to go do more work...we'll see how that library service thing turns out; I'm still waiting for a call back from them. Bye bye.