After serving with JSC for 2015-16, I’m actually working on my third service year! I live in Minneapolis and I am serving as an AmeriCorps volunteer in a middle school. My focus is to support students learning English as a secondary language in their content classes. The middle schoolers make me laugh every day, and I enjoy watching them experience new things in the world. It’s a wild adventure, and I love every second of it!
As time continues to pass, I am constantly finding new lessons that were planted during my year in Johnson Service Corps and at Club Nova. Spending my time at Club Nova, I gained an invaluable life skill in cooking. Since my year there, I have continued to experiment with cooking. While living in community, I valued the time we spent around the table together eating meals and sharing life. Club Nova helped me develop skills so that I can continue to create that experience in my life past JSC. Every once in awhile, I’ll make something that I made at the clubhouse and laugh to myself remembering when I learned how to make it with the members.
The one thing I am most grateful for is the commitment we made in our community to live simply. Through our conversations about living responsibly, I began to develop what I thought my life should look like in terms of what I needed compared to what I wanted to have. I came to a place where I found abundance in simplicity and community rather than in material goods. Without that, I don’t think I would be in my second year as an AmeriCorps volunteer!
I’m enjoying my time of learning how to stay in a place (after JSC, I lived in three different states in one year) and lean into the community I’ve discovered here. I’m still exploring what vocation looks like for me but I am finding immense joy on the journey.
