For me, service is all about the relentless pursuit to help those who are in need. Service is about making a difference that lasts in a community, and actively making everyone’s lives better in the process. That’s why we all joined AmeriCorps, and that’s why we are all here in the middle of Montana, to help the impoverished and the disadvantaged. Well, at least that’s what I hope to do. It has been a little hard to find jobs, tasks, and projects to do on a daily basis because sometimes there is nothing obvious to do. I ask all the time what I can do to help, it’s just that when I ask what I can do, sometimes the answer is there is nothing to do. For context, I am serving in Poplar, Montana, and my two main areas of focus are Poplar High School and Fort Peck Community College. 

Service has been harder than I thought to make a change that can truly last. It’s been good to help the community day-by-day, whether it is substituting for a class, or handing out scholarship applications; however, I wanted to take something and truly make it better. I have gotten comfortable and enjoyed what I have experienced at Poplar, whether it’s the colleagues and friends, the restaurants and bars, or the general environment, but the most important part was supposed to be making a difference. In order to make a difference, it is not going to be some flashy, dramatic, or cinematic event where I rush in to solve everyone’s problems in the course of an afternoon. For a change to be made, it has to be through a sense of consistency, patience, and discipline. Change is made through the culmination of the little things done everyday, every week, every month until my service is completed. 

Change is a gradual process that is not done alone. To create a change, I need to have the assistance of the faculty, staff, and students to make things possible. For one of my bigger projects, I was assigned to help out the Certified Nursing Association (CNA) class. The students had a good amount of problems in the class. This included not being able to login into the online course; then there was a firewall blocking the PowerPoint and the lecture notes; after, there were workbooks missing, and then the students wanted to receive a lesson plan to keep them on track. All the problems were fixed, but they were fixed over the course of a little more than a month. Furthermore, every issue mentioned was solved through collaboration with Julie Russel (the teacher of CNA class), the students themselves, and Jake Reideger (the Information Technology director). All I did was play my role. I communicated and brought up issues to the people who could actually fix the problems. Which, honestly, makes me feel a little bad because I wish I did more to solve the problem. But the problem was solved all the same. I should not feel bad. After all, I am not a nursing instructor and I am not an IT professional. I am an AmeriCorps member. I can communicate, instruct, lead, direct, and bring issues to light. I did my role, performed it well, and the issues were solved. Through playing my part well for a long period of time, I was able to make a positive change in the class. 

In an effort to make a difference, the service can be uncomfortable. After all, a thanks or a good job is not guaranteed. Well for me, when I was serving at the school to make sure that the students did their work to keep up their grades for college, I would receive push back from the students. I do not blame them for pushing back. I mean, they are high school students and I was a supervisor telling them to do classwork. Maybe that makes me “the bad guy” for making them do what they should do, but I did it to benefit their future. The students may not enjoy doing the work; however, they do it to benefit themselves in the long run whether it is getting into college or simply not failing the class. Through my service, I tried to make a worthwhile difference that would benefit the students’ futures. Those in class may never fully appreciate or understand what I did, but hopefully they are successful in what they do. 

Even if I do not always feel the most appreciated from my work, I want to keep going so I can make a lasting impact on the school. There are still plenty of ways for me to make a genuine difference and a positive change that makes the lives of the students better. For instance, this could be done through writing a grant or maybe two, which would help the school continuously after I leave Montana. Furthermore, I could take a student apathetic about college and get him excited to go. Then, I will do FAFSA with the seniors in February. Honestly, I am looking forward to the future and the opportunities that hopefully present themselves. If I am lucky, there will be plenty of genuine surprises that I can help out with. 

Through the process of the next 8 months, I will continue trying to make a change through a gradual process. To make a difference by being consistent, patient, and disciplined, as I will relentlessly pursue service on a daily basis to better help the Native American community. I mean, this is the mission of AmeriCorps, to assist those who need it the most, the impoverished and the disadvantaged. We serve our communities in every way possible. We may not always get a thank you or a congratulations. Our work may not be fully understood or appreciated. But the work is done for the greater good of the communities we serve. 

We are AmeriCorps. We serve communities for the greater good. It’s what we do.