Mitchel Grohs
Community day spring semester We went on a little field trip, which involved us making a meal for a soup kitchen, and around seventy people, it seemed like a big task especially given the tiny kitchen and lack of measuring tools, but like Queen said “The show must go on”. So it was packed in the kitchen and it was packed outside of the kitchen with a bunch of hungry less fortunate people. We had volunteered for the sort of first-hand experience of working right in front of the people who so many ignore on the sides of the roads, and in the soup kitchens. But for a change we had made it our mission to help them out for a change, when you look into their sad eyes and hand them a hot good meal, there is no feeling as good as that sort of sense of helping someone in need out. At first the vibe of a lot of the people in our dignitas group seemed to be timid and kind of scared of the hungry people. I was even a little nervous at the idea of working in a kitchen around all of these lower financial class people. Why is this that everyone seemed to categorize the people at the soup kitchen into a kind of reckless stereo type where we didn’t really know what to expect? I think a big part of the reason for these feelings is due to only hearing about the bad stuff that happens with homeless people. For example, fights, shootings, stealing, and rape related crimes. Never do we hear about the thank you that is said quietly when they are handed a plate of warm food by a college kid who has no idea of how hard their life truly is. Now this is the reason St. Scholastica has a community day once every semester, to give back to the community in which ever way it can. They don’t do it to make the college look better, and don’t do it to make themselves feel better; it is truly done to help out some people who are in need. My initial thoughts on serving at a soup kitchen were at least we don’t have school, kind of a typical closed minded college kid take. But the longer we stayed there the more I felt like I was actually making someone’s day a little bit better. Just seeing the families who were coming to a soup kitchen to eat there nightly dinner had me thinking what it would be like if I was in their situation. Now that is something I don’t like to do, I try to look at the bright side of most situations, but in this case I really couldn’t see how living on the streets and eating meals like this was desire able. That’s when I started talking to the people who I was serving and asking them about their story, and that’s when it