End of the Second Week

It is the end of the second week of the Quest III class, and I am learning a lot about Community Experience from both the Community Partners and from my students. Although I had already met and talked to leaders at all three of our Community Partners, I still gained a lot from their presentations in class. All of the representatives are experienced speakers and presented the goals and needs of their organizations in a moving way. I am looking forward to working with them on a personal level as well as forwarding the goals of this class. For the past 19 or so years, I have tended to pour my extra energies into the university community, because that has been the place where I most wanted to make my contribution. Now that I have lived so long in Oshkosh and have children in the community, I would like to make a difference in the city as well.

I am also very impressed by my students' prior volunteer experience. To be sure, it has been a few years since my high school career, but I do not remember doing anything like as much volunteer work as they have done. I hope they gain from the work they do in this class and that they can connect what they do with what people have done in the past. Working on the course material over the summer has already helped me make connections between the past and the present that I had never before seen.

Dr. Loiacono and I have been planning for this moment since Fall 2012! We are excited and a little nervous about the start of what looks to be great class. We are looking forward to meeting our students and to watching them work with our Community Partners and learn about how people in medieval and early modern England and then in the British North America and the U.S.A. engaged in charitable acts. It should be a great semester!