Category:
East Villagers Service Scholar 2010
Jung Bae - Lakes High School, WA
By definition, the goal of all community service is to use one’s skills to do something that benefits someone else. I volunteer time to time at a local elementary school because I’m decent at working with kids, and I help out at food drives because I can provide that tireless teen labor, but the service that I feel the most useful in providing lies in academia. For three years, I’ve been regularly helping fellow students with their studies, as a tutor at the math help sessions after school as well as informally helping friends and classmates study for standardized exams and with homework. I feel that I’ve really achieved something good when I look at the progress that students make with my aid; I have the knowledge that I’ve improved someone’s life. In addition, my service has been (and continues to be) a foundation for truly genuine, enduring relationships and friendships. But most importantly, the experience helped to fundamentally change my outlook during the formative years of high school, eventually affecting my life as a whole.
My work started at the after-school math sessions: as a sophomore, I’d attend these sessions on Tuesdays and Thursdays, primarily helping the kids working in the computer lab (we had these software-based math programs to facilitate curriculums up to geometry and algebra 3/4). Junior year, I moved on to the pen-and-paper students, who were generally struggling with CalculusAB or advanced algebra. I enjoyed the work more and more as I attended sessions. I hardly knew any of the students coming in for help at the start of sophomore year, but as the weeks went on, I was able to get an idea of what kind of specific help each person needed as well as of their personalities.
Senior year saw my time devoted to independent study sessions. Word of my SAT score got around the school and community, and as a result I received quite a number of requests for help on that exam. I helped two of my friends quite extensively over a couple months at the beginning of the school year; until then, I was unsure of the extent of my ability to help others improve their scores. Fortunately, these two saw good results, and I then reached out and assisted about a dozen others on-and-off as they prepared for their own SATs and, with one student, his ACT exam. After the “testing season” (up to around January, when most seniors complete their college entrance testing), I continued to offer homework and other academic tutoring.
It wasn’t always easy work. Especially as a senior, when I was dealing with college applications and extracurriculars for the entire year, I often had to cut into already-strapped schedules to make time to help—I was always very loathe to turn people down. In addition, committing to tutor someone that was taking the same courses as me meant that I always had to stay far ahead of course material. (Fortunately, this also meant we usually studied together, as opposed to me providing the assistance.)
If I didn’t truly enjoy tutoring, I would never have been able to keep this up. As I wrote above, I developed a joy of watching my classmates get better and gain confidence. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that I wasn’t working with substantially younger or older people, but rather students my own age. We all went through high school together; I watched them improve in their schoolwork, and at the same time saw their personal and emotional growth into young adults. I naturally identified with them, and their struggle was my struggle just as their success was my success.
My experience in tutoring also forged new relationships with people that I was only acquainted with. I got to know different people in different ways; but as a common factor, they all knew that I tutored because I really wanted to, while also recognizing that I did have to take a little time out of my day to do so. I think that’s what made all the difference: I provided help because I enjoyed it and had the ability to, but people more appreciated the fact that I was making a little sacrifice, no matter how small or insignificant. I eventually developed close friendships with several of the students that I first got to know by tutoring, and that’s something that I value immensely—if nothing else had come out of spending my time in this way but those friendships, I would think the effort more than worth it. And the others let me know that I have somehow impacted them as well: recently I had the chance to speak with a class of ’09 graduate, and he still remembered that I helped him with his math during my sophomore and his junior year, even though we hadn’t kept in touch at all for two years. This was especially surprising, as I didn’t even recall it very well myself. Another time, my leadership advisor polled our ASB class and asked everyone who had received some form of help from me to raise their hands—nearly every junior and senior there did, and all had something heartfelt to say about it (again, even my memory had slipped on some of them).
It’s certainly nice to be distinguished for the things that you do—and I did receive more than my share of recognition for my service. But that has not been, and never will be, my motivation. Even when I first started, and didn’t get very much gratification from tutoring, the incentive was filling up my community service hours rather than being credited for anything. As I’ve explained, something else now drives me to continue this work, and recognition is simply a pleasant surprise that tends to come automatically.
That brings me to a final understanding that came out of my service experience. I may not have done tutoring for recognition, but until a couple years ago I was, in fact, always trying to get myself noticed, to be a prominent character in the school community, and to be well-known and well-liked. The tutoring experience was part of a chain of events that eventually showed me of my misdirection. Those things are not ends to pursue, but simply the inevitable products of practicing genuineness, kindness, honesty…those basic virtues. This is why I have as much gratitude for the people I helped as they had for me initially. To them I owe an opening of my eyes, so that I was able to put my heart in the right place. I started building more true relationships and striving for positive change. And sure enough, everything else fell into place. I received recognition for my perfect SAT score and tutoring efforts; I spent a fruitful year in ASB student council; I graduate this June with the distinction of valedictorian as well as the more meaningful (to me, at least), student-voted titles of Prom King and senior hall of fame member.
So even today, I continue to answer homework questions. Continue to walk into my local bookstore with friends for a quick study session. Continue to teach and give academic advice to underclassmen. And knowing me, this’ll probably be a routine in college as well. I’m simply too much in love with helping others with their intellectual pursuits, the joy that it gives me, the difference that I make, and the relationships that it forms. Moreover, I’m aware of the lessons the experience taught me, and I’m always open for more revelations like that—especially if it changes my life as dramatically as the previous one did. I don’t know if any more are coming down the road, but regardless, I tutor on.
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