Nicodemus Wilderness Project -- Global Registry of Apprentice Ecologists

After doing these twenty hours of community service for my Organizational Behavior and Leadership I learned many new things. Honestly, when Amanda told me about this kind of community service I thought that it was going to be kind of boring to just go around and pick up trash for twenty hours but I was way wrong. This experience made me open my eyes to many things that I never really thought about before.

When I was going around and picking up trash people looked up to me especially here at my school (Eckerd College). They saw what me and Amanda were doing and people actually were surprised! Some students even told us that they couldnâ€™t believe we were doing this for the community and that they were amazed, which actually made me feel proud of myself. I have to be honest with you, my hands smelled really, REALLY bad! I used to take for granted every time the garbage man went by my house and picked up my families trash, but now after me actually doing this first hand, I know that they work really hard and put up with a lot of things such as smell. You donâ€™t realize how hard something is until you actually do it. My back hurt sometimes from all the bending down which goes to show that picking up trash and cleaning the environment isnâ€™t as easy as it sounds.

I am proud of myself because I know that I helped out my environment by doing this. The areas that me and Amanda picked up here at our school looked a lot better than what they did before. By having a cleaner environment it means that I am also helping out the animals which I have a passion for. I was surprised at how fast the time went by when me and Amanda were picking up trash! Of course, this was a good thing. I guess when your working and enjoying what your doing time does go by fast. I also wanted to add in that this was definitely the type of activity that I needed for my class because it did teach me some management skills that I could use out in the business world. For example, it taught me leadership and courage. You definitely need courage to go around cleaning up the environment in front of college kids. Believe me when I say that.

I am very grateful that you gave me the opportunity to participate in this because it helped me a lot. Me and Amanda can both agree that this indeed was a good experience for the both of us that we needed. I will definitely spread the word about the service that you guys do to all of my friends.