Only 16 more days until students flood my living quarters for some sort of ludicrous concert that everyone should be able to see since there will be no Cataracts. The imminent end to the semester means that it’s registration time!
Apparently, I have been kept in the dark about one of the worst kept registration secrets at Duke: the awesome service-learning courses. I have seen students glowing day in and day out about service-learning courses. I have actually never heard any students say anything bad about their experiences with the courses, though unfortunately the professors are not given the same amnesty.
I tried to figure out why service-learning students enjoyed their experiences in and out of the classroom. What do these students have in common? They all have a blind passion for the basketball team, the enzymes necessary to digest a textbook and the great privilege of being at a prestigious university. Having the know-how and the altruism necessary to give back is what drives these students to engage in the Durham community.
According to what I’ve gathered, students like these classes because they are able to immerse themselves in what they are learning about. This is especially useful for the students who feel like they are doing nothing by discussing amorphous policies that affect faceless individuals.
Students can read in class how Spanish-speaking people having relatively poorer health in America due to the language and social barriers between the doctor and patient. Why not go to the conveniently located Duke University Emergency Department and speak with the Spanish-speaking patients to figure out exactly how they think those barriers can be traversed?
Maybe you’ve been thinking that making public policies crimps your style, so there isn’t any reason for you to take one of these courses. Oh really? When I leafed through a paper course catalog, I found non-policy classes such as “Chemistry Outreach”; “Latino/a Voices in Duke, Durham, and Beyond”; “Death and Dying”; and “Performance and Social Change” (a dance class). Is it out of the question for the privileged Duke student to go out in the community and give some time up or at least give something back to Durham? Side note: Completing the required 20 volunteer hours is an easy part of your grade. Squirrels would put these types of things on their resume as well as their transcript, so why haven’t you signed up yet?
For those of you who would say, “I hate you for bringing up classes next year because I’m old,“ have no fear. Somewhere between 1 and 99 percent of you don’t have real jobs yet for next year, so why not go ahead and continue the practice of service learning, paid or unpaid, beyond your Duke experience? I’m not suggesting any long-term career change, but if you’re doing nothing during your time off, why not go work in a hospital? You could get an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) or Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) certification and help out the underpaid and overworked of the medical field.
What separates the weak from the strong is a commitment to upholding their morals, which they so openly preach to BC passersby. Anybody can sit in a lab and write a research paper saying how rodents are dumber than primates; any student can table on the plaza to teach the guinea pigs of Papua New Guinea what a papua is. Any student can actually go out into their community to teach the dumb rodents of the world (cough squirrels cough), but how many do? The answer is: not enough.
The Gothic Squirrel would like to propose an earth-shattering idea: adding a service-learning course to the graduation requirements. If the sciences are allowed to add lab components without increasing course credit, why can’t everyone be required to do service learning? Why force students to half-ass their Arts, Language and Performance (ALP) and Quantitative Science (QS) T-Reqs, like they always do, when they could not only gain from a service-learning course, but also enjoy it? At least adding service components to existing classes, like “Bonkistry,” would be a step in the right direction. If everyone who has been taught by Dr. Bonk did 20 hours of service, then I’m pretty sure that the American Chemical Society would never need another volunteer again. The Gothic Squirrel realizes that suggesting the departments add a service component is much more easily said than done, but the rewards will greatly outweigh the costs.
So go ahead, take a chance, and breakaway from the norm of the “normal class.” It might serve you well.
The guinea pig is neither from Guinea, nor is it a pig. Discuss.
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